The Wedding

The wedding procession sets off from the St. Mary's Church in Krakow to the rural cottage of Włodzimierz Tetmajer in Bronowice. The Groom, Lucjan Rydel, representing the Krakow intelligentsia, marries Jadwiga Mikołajczykówna, who comes from the countryside. The union of these two worlds becomes a pretext for a shared celebration, feast, and dance, during which supernatural phenomena also appear. Rachel, a Jewish poetess, arrives at the house, bringing with her the Strawman figure; the spirits of Wernyhora and Jakub Szela also appear, and the atmosphere is permeated with historical and national symbolism. The Wedding becomes an attempt at national awakening and an independence uprising, but at dawn, social realities and limitations reveal their power. Andrzej Wajda’s film masterfully combines neo-Romantic symbolism with a reflection on the impossibility of understanding between the intelligentsia and the common folk in early 20th-century Poland.