Poets on Film: A Black & White Biopic That Feels Like a Visual Poem
The 2013 drama Papusza tells the story of the so-called "first Romani poetess" and succeeds in elevating the personhood, if not the creative work, of its subject.
![Papusza review – ponderous tale of a Polish poet | Biopics | The Guardian Papusza review – ponderous tale of a Polish poet | Biopics | The Guardian](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F68df8fd2-619a-4306-a038-ba11a14fa693_700x420.jpeg)
What does it mean to make a great biopic? What do we want from the genre as a whole? I suppose it’s some assemblage of these offerings:
Biography: the Capital-T Truth, and hopefully a whole lot of little-t truths, about the film’s subject
Intimacy: A feeling of closeness to the inner workings of someone who may feel one-dimensional to us
Humanization: a sense that while the subject is special, they are also like us in fundamental ways
Entertainment: for all their research, biopics are, after all, pics—we want to be amused and fascinated by the film as a film
What about biopics of poets and writers? Are there additional requirements for this subgenre? If so, they might be:
Language: Examples of the writer’s work that are written or shown in order to initiate new fans and delight existing ones
Purpose: A sense of what the writer’s work means to them emotionally, spiritually, and/or intellectually
In most of these ways, Papusza—the 2013 biopic of Polish-Romani poet Bronisława Wajs—is a triumph. But there is one item on this list that’s lacking…
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