A man is also a man. There is an official classification of genres: thriller, melodrama, action movie. And sometimes - everyone has his own: "love during the apocalypse", "life cinema", "in defense of family relations".
In my personal classification there are films of the genre “man is also a man”. Among them, the most convincing is the Polish film Tato (Daddy).
Feminism is long gone. It is time to invent trends in defense of men's rights. With the seeming equality in society (at least in the so-called countries of European civilization), the rights of a man are often infringed only because he is a man. Society is no longer forgiving of weakness. The boy from childhood is taught that girls can not be offended, that he is a man and therefore should not cry (perplexed logic, right?), he must take care of others, opening doors, giving way and bringing bags. The older he gets, the more often he hears in his address the infinite “should, must, must.” All this is a serious burden on a man. But he's particularly vulnerable as a father. In fact, it is only “should” here. But as for “right” – it has yet to be proved. That’s what the movie is about.
How insecure a man really is, is fully felt only when the usual system collapses. Like the Tato movie. Here lived a smart, beautiful man in the prime of his life named Michal in the familiar system for him: he loved his wife, cheated on her “for small things” (well, this is a kind of accessible entertainment), loved work, was in demand, supported his wife and daughter. Of course he loved his daughter. But at the same time I did not know what she preferred for breakfast and who she was friends with, I did not know the number of her school or the name of the teacher. That's how he lived. And this seemed to suit everyone, did not characterize him as a bad or dishonest person, was not condemned by society at all. How vulnerable he was, Michal only felt when that familiar system collapsed. For him, it was quite sudden.
The film is good precisely because of this social significance, precisely because it raises a problem that is very rarely discussed in society. That’s why I want to talk about that. It’s not about the script and the direction; about the typically Polish mandatory components in the form of humor, sex and some cruelty; about the music that leaves the feeling of “it was a long time ago and with me”; about the actors that are so recognizable, so charming, as if moving from screen to your room. Everything is perfect and everything works for the end result.
That’s why film art is good – it allows such a story to end in favor of a man, and it gives a sense of triumphant justice. And in life, this is extremely rare, and exceptions only confirm the rule. In life, most men do not have such a trump card as the diagnosis of Michal’s wife. And there is no director in the life to come up with this “trump”. How difficult it is in reality to resolve this situation with minimal losses, you feel especially acutely when you look at her through the eyes of a seven-year-old heroine - just a good girl, whose consciousness has not yet been clouded by public stereotypes, which makes her see everything in the most correct light. The only possible thing.
In general, no matter how simple it sounds, the film makes you think. Regardless of whose role the viewer is easier to try on. Michala Lee. Wives are in fact a deeply unhappy young woman. The mother-in-law is a powerful woman who raised an unhappy daughter. Or a lawyer – a woman left without a daughter through the fault of her husband, but still helping another man to fight for paternal rights. Or a former alcoholic who devoted his life to helping unhappy fathers (and, in fact, the war with windmills).
Extreme frankness in some scenes (conversations in court about sex, a story with a teacher, a dialogue between daughter and father in a taxi, which the viewer seems to eavesdrop with a taxi driver) is convincing and therefore mandatory. However, there are costs to this candor – films that have all this are not accepted to show children until a certain age. Or maybe it's bad that it's not accepted? After all, the little heroine of the film such acquaintance with life clearly did not harm.
In time to realize that the father is also a person. How could it hurt?