RKS CANADIAN Literature: (Michael Ondaatje)Thermometer of Blood

“She never looked at herself in mirrors again. As the war got darker she received reports about how certain people she had known died. She feared the day she would remove blood from a patient’s face and discover her father or someone who had served her food across a counter on Danforth Avenue. She grew harsh with herself and the patients. Reason was the only thing that would save them and there was no reason. The thermometer of blood moved up the country. Where was and what was Toronto in her mind? This was treacherous opera. People hardened against those around them-soldiers, doctors, nurses, civilians.”

Michael Ondaatje, “The English Patient”, 1992.

RKS CANADIAN Literature: Shell Shocked Nurses (Michael Ondaatje)

“Nurses too became shell-shocked from the dying around them. Or from something as small as a letter. They would carry a severed arm down the hall, or swab at blood that never stopped, as if the wound were a well, and they began to believe in nothing, trusted nothing. They broke the way a man dismantling a mine broke the second his geography exploded. The way Hana broke in Santa Chiara hospital when an official walked down the space between a hundred beds and gave her a letter that told her of the death of her father.”

Michael Ondaatje, “The English Patient”, 1992.

RKS 2025 Film: “Trains”: Dreamlike and Savage

“Trains”, a Polish film directed by Maciej J. Drygas, is more reflective about humanity than trains. Trains can move humanity in adventuresome and joyful spirits but in this film more towards the unspeakable horrors of war on soldiers and civilians alike.

46 film archives were utilized crafting a black and white film without dialogue only haunting and threatening industrial noise music with train sounds such as the unmistakeable clickety clack and chug chug. Yes and, in a rare humorous moment, even Charlie Chaplin disembarking from a train.

The film commences with footage of locomotives and passenger cars being manufactured at a huge industrial site in England. Massive if not monstrous locomotives indicative of raw power, weight, metal and indestructibility.

Then footage of passengers happily being transported with a sense of excitement and gaiety rapidly turning to the use of trains during the First World War to transport unsuspecting armies to a horrific war. Munitions, massive artillery pieces and equipment are loaded on transport cars. Optimism and ignorance are on the faces of soldiers on their way to the front. The scenery rapidly turns into human misery as maimed soldiers many missing limbs are transported home. Prosthetic face plates, jaws, legs and arms are shown being fitted and two pictures of shell-shocked soldiers twitching and jerking around in a horrific fashion are shown. You might not forget that scene for quite some time.

The horror recedes replaced by happy passengers travelling through the countryside joking, napping, chatting, playing cards, reading, eating in the dining car, dancing to live music, watching a film in the cinema car and enjoying life.

Then again the cycle of war and destruction with the military build up of Germany and yes even Hitler taking a train trip to happy waving crowds and a child marching up to his railway car giving him a salute. Hitler meeting with military officials on his railcar. Jews with armbands in the streets then being herded into box cars for their final journey followed by carloads full of emaciated corpses from the camps, rescued prisoners being carried out from camps by American soldiers. Footage of German the rail network being destroyed by Allied bombs then rebuilt. Refugees being transported on rail cars. Families awaiting the return of soldiers at train stations.

Then passengers back on the rail cars enjoying food in the dining car, mail being sorted on the train and dropped off at stations, workers being transported into London from the suburbs. Is yet another period of normalcy forthcoming but where are the Russian soldiers with tanks on rail cars being transported to? To crush the 1956 Hungarian uprising?

Trains do not speak but if they could what would they say? What director Maciej J. Drygas has so lyrically presented?

Quite unlike any other film I have seen. Dreamlike yet savage. Riveting, simplistic façade but complicated.

Screens at the 2025 Biannual Kino Polska Film Festival in New York 15September2025.

RKS 2025 Film Rating: 91/100.

RKS 2025 Film: “Filip”: Revenge and Retribution Misogynist Style

The film begins with Polish Jew Filip (Eryk Kulm) beginning his performance in a Warsaw Ghetto cabaret with his fiancé Sara. The audience and performers all wear armbands with a Star of David. Germans enter the cabaret massacring the audience including Sara. Filip escapes and through a Polish manager/black marketeer, Staszeki, of a compulsory labour dormitory in Frankfurt taking a position as a waiter at the upscale Park Hotel.

Filip has a penchant, perhaps even a dangerous obsession, for German women. Filip is subject to many restrictions placed on compulsory workers in Germany. German law forbade fraternization, upon penalty of death, between German women and compulsory workers who are from “conquered territories”. Filip’s assumed name is Frenchman Phillipe Junot.  All the waiters but one at the Grand Hotel are compulsory workers. Filip shares a room with fellow waiter Pierre.

There are several encounters between Filip and Germans where he is insulted as a filthy foreigner.

The danger is magnified by the fact Filip is a Jew an identity concealed through false identification papers. Filip’s goal is to humiliate, debase and defile the German women he seduces and ultimately make hem feel like whores.

At a park swimming pool Filip eyes Lisa (Caroline Hartig) a daughter in a prominent Nazi family. Pierre bets Filip he can’t seduce Lisa. Filip pursues Lisa and captures her heart. Does he reciprocate the love or is it his brand of justified misogyny that is hate not love?

Filip is questioned by the Gestapo for an earlier dalliance with a German women Blanka Brandt but is released through the work of his quick tongue.

A fellow waiter Francesco is beaten and dragged away in front of the wait staff for fornication with a general’s wife. He is hung publicly with other compulsory labourers who have had sexual encounters with German women. His friend Pierre is executed at the hotel by a German officer for stealing a bottle of wine from the restaurant. At this point Filip at the edge of madness confesses to the executioner of Pierre he is Jew and insults the German nation. The officer does not believe this story under the impression Filip is distraught and hysterical over the death of his friend Pierre.

The film culminates with Filip and Lisa preparing to flee by train to Paris but Filip has one more wait assignment at the Park Hotel which is a marriage of a high-ranking military leader’s cousin.

As the guests are happily dancing to the music of “The Frankfurt Express” misogyny is elevated to the “action” Filip craves. In one last brazen act of misogyny Filip boards the Paris bound train as new recruits in the passage to platforms march off to the front.

Superb costuming and sets in “Filip” lend great authenticity to the production.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQc9fJAs7-w&t=2s

The film is directed by Michal Kwieciński.

Based on a 1961 autobiographical novel by Leopold Tyrmand.

It will be screening at the Biannual Kino Polska Film Festival in New York on 15September2025.

RKS 2025 Film Rating: 92/100.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Henry of Pelham 2023 Lost Boys Baco Noir: Not a Wine for Cider House Rules Orphanage: Confessions of a Turkey Gravy Man!

Baco Noir is a French Hybrid grape produced in 1894 and planted in days of yore in Ontario and the Eastern United States. Perhaps a low life or roustabout grape for the unsophisticated decades ago? A “90 Day Fiancé” or a” Below the Deck” type of grape?

Like South African Pinotage it can be dreadful or magnificent. It presents the nose with a smoky and soft fruit nose but once it hits the palate it can be Concordish. Not so with Henry of Pelham. I recall a few years ago I pulled a Henry of Pelham Baco Noir that had been a lost boy in my cellar for some 8 years. It could have been one of the best Ontario red wines I have encountered.

Few wineries can pull off a memorable Baco Noir in Ontario but if any winery can accomplish Baco Noir excellence it is Henry of Pelham which should not be confused with the disaster movie “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3”.

This Baco Noir comes from some of H of P’s oldest vineyards planted in 1984 in crooked rows that follow the contour of the vineyard. The wine was aged in spicy American oak (new and one year old barriques) and finished in more subtle French oak.

Aroma: Dense smoky black cherry and chocolate infused root beer. Secondary notes of blackberry, black raspberry and coconut.

Palate: Smooth and big time fruity without disintegrating into foxy grape juice nor that terrible acidic fizz plaguing so many Ontario Baco’s. The smoothness and fruit camouflages the tannins and acids. But make no mistake this is no sloppy floozy wine. The finish is Tawny Port like meaning long and decadent.

Personality: Is there really any other Ontario Baco Noir other than from my master’s at H of P?

Food Match: Pasta with Putanesca sauce simmered with Tawny Port and using Ontario field tomatoes and garlic. Oh….a stellar match with festive turkey particularly when consumed with cranberry sauce! Perish the thought for me…a gravy man!

Music Match: “Foxy Lady”….Hendrix.

Cellarbility: A difficult question! It’s lack of perceived tannins and acids may indicate drink by 2026-year end but my personal experience hints at a wine that will evolve into 2031. This wine may defy established rules. The beguiling nature of exceptional Ontario Baco Noir.

Price: $40 CDN. YIKES!!! But evaluate this exclamation at the end of this decade.

RKS 2025 Canadian Wine Rating: 93/100. Natalie MacLean 93. Wine Align 89.

(Henry of Pelham Family Estate 2023 Bin 106 Lost Boys Baco Noir, VQA Ontario, Henry of Pelham Family Estate Winery, St, Catharines, Ontario, 750 mL, 13%).

RKS 2025 Film: “Green Border”: Trials and Tribulations of Refugees and Migrants Crossing Belarusian Border into Poland

This Polish feature film opens with a Syrian refugee family flying from Turkey into Belarus where a taxi arranged by a family member living in Sweden will transport them to the Polish border where they will “illegally” cross into Poland the assumption being the trip from Poland to Sweden can be made without any difficulty as after all they are in the EU the land of refugee and migrant perceived milk and honey. The Syrian family muses flying into Belarus then “sneaking into” to Poland, an EU member, is less trying and much safer than a boat crossing. The film makes it quite clear this is not the case.

The Syrian family accompanied by an Afghan refugee take the prearranged taxi from the airport to an unofficial Belarus-Polish border crossing being stopped in a heavily forested area by Belarus military authorities that extort a further 300 Euros to permit them to crawl under the barbed wire and to the EU! After struggling through the Polish forest for two days the Polish border security forces roundup the Syrian family and toss them into a truck with other migrants and refugees and shove them back through the barbed wire to Belarus where they are extorted, robbed and beaten. The Syrian family escapes back into Poland and promptly herded by Polish border security forces again in ping pong fashion into Belarus. One refugee tells the Syrian family this back and forth has happened to him 5 times. Migrants and refugees are bled dry by the Belarusians and despised by both the Poles and Belarusians.  

The Syrian grandfather is severely beaten by the Belarusian security forces and separated from the family and their young son escapes into the Polish forest with the Afghani woman and drowns in a bog.

The Belarusians are portrayed as vicious louts. The Poles are less vicious but the Polish border guards are trained to treat these “darky” migrants and refugees as live bullets from Putin and dictator President Lukashenko of Belarus a strong Russian ally. We follow a border guard who gradually faces disillusionment, if not PTSD, after participating in so many terrorizing and brutal roundups and expulsions.

Poles are unsympathetic to the refugees and migrants flowing through the Belarusian border but there are Polish activists providing legal advice, food, water, medical care, phones, power banks and dry clothes but do not act as guides or offer transportation facing arrest for aiding illegal migrants. Even where the initial paperwork for Polish asylum is prepared officially requiring transport to a migrant camp this rule is ignored and the border police may simply “export” migrants and refugees back to Belarus.

Viewers may expect a steady diet of desperation, terror, fear, violence and corruption directed toward migrants and refugees entering Poland through Belarus and those that help them face harassment and or arrest.

Strange watching the Epilogue where during the first two weeks from the start of the Russian 26February2022 invasion of Ukraine close to two million Ukrainian refugees were admitted into Poland in a polite and good-mannered fashion unlike the treatment of refugees and migrants entering Poland through the Belarusian border. Was this based on religion, race, geographical proximity and politics?

The black and white cinematography lends a realistic and highly depressing tinge to the film. This film simply could not have been shot in colour.

Directed by Agnieszka Holland.

Screens 13September2025 at the Biannual Kino Polska Film Festival in New York.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 89/100.

RKS 2025 Film: “It’s Not My Film” (To nie moj): Can A Crumbling Relationship Survive The Odyssey?

Young urban Poles Wanda (Zofia Chabiera) and Jan (Marcin Sztabiňski) are suffering from marital blues.

It might be summed up by a depressed Wanda at a bar with Jan saying she wants to board an airplane and fly away, get morning drunk on tequila and have someone fuck her over a kitchen sink and it doesn’t matter with whom and one expects Jan to text her with messages like buying wieners and trash bags. About the only thing that makes Wanda in her relationship with Jan happy is being able to fit a cauliflower in a pot.

Jan, less expressive and more reserved than Wanda, simply can’t determine what Wanda wants or makes her tick.

Jan proposes and Wanda accepts they set out on a 400-kilometer winter hike along Poland’s Baltic coast trailing belongings with provisions in sleds along sandy beaches and camping out with minimal interaction or contact with civilization. As Jan states, “We aren’t going to fall in love again by sitting on the couch.”

Off they commence their marital odyssey with Jan setting yet another rule stating if they can’t make the trek they will end the marriage.

Be prepared for spectacular cinematography along the wintery Baltic coast. At moments one can’t but help thinking of similarities of the wintery Baltic coast with the desert of “Lawrence of Arabia” . Crashing waves, snow, greyness, sunsets with almost all humans encountered eccentrics like the hermit living in a trailer or the very drunk man with tomato seedlings he asks Jan and Wanda to deliver to his mother. It is almost as Wanda and Jan are explorers in a virgin land discovering its beauty and hopefully themselves.

Thrust and parry they go not making any ostensible progress with their crumbling relationship. Every advance made is countered by a set back.

The rules “of a perfect relationship” are after all “rules” aren’t they? Stereotypical and far from custom made for “real relationships”. Wanda believes her rules should rule the roost but will she waiver when Jan says to her, “If I am in a prison, you are the crack that let’s the air in”?

If there is any prison here it would be built brick by brick by Wanda’s expectations but with prisons there are always prison breaks.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNcBcLHlUPo&t=2s

The director is Maria Zbąska.

The film screens 18September2025 in New York at the Biannual Kino Polska Film Fest.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 87/100.

RKS 2025 Film: “Under the Volcano”: Metaphorical Streams of Lava!

Roma (Roman Lutskyi), his wife Nastia (Anastasiia Karpenko) and Roma’s children the phone obsessed Sofia (Sofia Berezovska) and the cartoon loving Fedir (Fedir Pugachov) are Ukrainians spending a vacation on one of the Canary Islands, Tenerife. Fun and good times and inevitably the departure back to Kiev. But the fun and games abruptly end with their return flight indefinitely cancelled due to the full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24February2022. A military eruption if you prefer.

They return to their hotel and are offered free room and board courtesy of hotel management. They endeavour to continue their holiday but emotions of fear, apprehension, dread, isolation, anger and frustration erupt. At times the familial tension is so high it is as if a final eruption will tear the family to shreds. There is also the spectre of Roma joining the Ukrainian Territorial Forces upon his return to the Ukraine.

The family takes a walk at the foot of Tenerife’s main volcano Mount Teide becoming lost leading to a battle royale between Roma and Nastia whose bickering becomes their normal tone of communication. At one point Nastia explodes in a tirade against Russian tourists at their hotel.

Sofia meets an African migrant Mike who tells of his voyage to Spain along with 55 others to start a “new life.” Mike is in the right place. Mike wishes to remain in Spain. The Ukrainian family is in the wrong place. They wish to return to Ukraine. Both are victims of circumstances and living in a stratum of unreality.

There are 4 scenes in the film of the rough and crashing ocean somewhat symbolic of the storm Ukraine and the family are caught in and the journey that migrants endure travelling to Spain in ramshackle boats.

The family’s visit to an abandoned resort is reminiscent of destroyed Ukrainian villages seen on news reports and documentaries about the war.

Sofia’s walk down the street while fireworks explode amidst a celebration is in metaphorical terms what awaits millions of Ukrainians.

Interpret the film the way you wish but aren’t we all are living under a volcano of sorts waiting for metaphorical eruptions?

The director of “Under the Volcano” is Damian Kocur.

Screens at New York’s Bi-Annual Kino Polska Film Fest on 13September2025.

The film was submitted as Poland’s official entry for the Best International Film at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 87/100.

RKS 2025 Wine: The Liquor Control Board of Ontario Embarrasses Itself Yet Again

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) everyone’s favourite liquor monopoly has soiled itself yet again. It mouths a rah rah rah for Ontario wines but rarely delivers except for the wines of Niagara but even there….

In the 13September2025 Vintages Release catalogue the cover of the catalogue trumpets “We’re All In On Ontario”. The LCBO is so into Ontario wines it has completely forgotten, as usual, any serious inclusion of the wines of Lake Erie North Shore (LENS) and Prince Edward County (PEC) both wines producing areas in the province of Ontario.

And what is the love affair with all these Le Clos Jordanne wines in the catalogue?

Time to defund the LCBO! LENS and PEC wines matter!

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine: Redstone 2021 Gamay Noir

Aroma: Raspberry, Niagara red cherry and a generous dosage of French oak.

Palate: Restrained and tight giving little rein to the raspberry and cherry but not stifling it. Short finish with light and passing tannins.

Personality: So if I don’t flaunt my fruit this is a matter of choice and style.

Cellarbility: Drink now.

Food Pairing: Not much on the Redstone Winery restaurant menu that suits this Gamay to a tee. My choice would be their Nduja & Ricotta Ravioli (Roasted red pepper & tomato vinaigrette, toasted almond, arugula and Parmesan).

Price: $24 CDN.

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Wine Rating: 83/100. Michael Godel Wine Align 89.

(Redstone 2021 Gamay Noir, VQA Twenty Mile Bench, Redstone Wines, Beamsville, Ontario, 750 mL, 12.5%).