Poland 1984. The country had recently emerged from Martial Law, under the rule of General Jaruzelski. In the shipyards of Gdansk, Lech Walesa was leading a social movement that would change the world. Great Polish directors like Wajda, Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland, were more or less at the peak of their powers. And Juliusz Machulski released Sexmission, a satire so crude Jonathan Swift would have been proud. Two scientists, Maks and Albert, are cryogenically stored and wake up in the year 2044 to find that men have been abolished and women rule the world. Everyone lives underground because of a nuclear accident. Maks and Albert have emerged into this brave new world, and Maks, played by Jerzy Stuhr, the protagonist of Kieslowski’s Camera Buff, is determined to convince the women that they have been missing out on something. This leads to farcical scenes with the men eventually threatened with being ‘naturalised’, ie having their gender changed, before they finally escape. When they do, they discover that the world outside is far from what they, or any of the women living below, had been lead to believe. The point of the film is in this final sequence, which one imagines was conceived during Marital Law itself, as the film was released in 1984, and Martial Law only ended in 1983. The world outside (the world beyond the Communist block) is nothing like you have been lead to believe, the film boldly declares, dressed up as a sex romp to keep the old guard amused. Reminiscent to some extent of Brazil, and presumably made on a far smaller budget, IMDB informs that it is one of the most successful Polish movies ever made, and shows that subversive, political films don’t have to be po-faced.
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