I Never Cry Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

I Never Cry Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 10, 2021

Piotr Domalewski's "I Never Cry" (2020) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Montage Pictures/Eureka Entertainment. There are no bonus features on the release. In Polish and English, with optional English subtitles where necessary. Region-B "locked".

Ola

Piotr Domalewski’s film I Never Cry sums up perfectly the reality of countless families residing in the former Eastern Bloc. They are broken families that are either barely surviving or given up and fallen apart but pretending that there are still better days ahead.

Ola’s (Zofia Stafiej) family has fallen apart. Although they have been keeping in touch, she does not remember her father because years ago he left Poland to seek work in Western Europe. She is constantly at odds with her mother (Kinga Preis), who is unemployed and does not have enough money coming from the government to take care of her autistic brother. It is why Ola prefers to spend all of her free time with her best friend from school, Goska (Zofia Przygonska), who is a good listener and always smiles.

Shortly after Ola fails her driving exam, her mother tells her that someone had tried to contact them from Ireland with a message about her father. She phones back and is informed that her father has been crushed by a giant container. After the initial shock from the horrific news, Ola agrees to fly to Ireland and bring back the cold body of her father. But she has never been on a plane before, does not know what is required of her to transfer the body to Poland, or whether she and her mother can actually afford to do a proper burial for her father.

The simplicity of the drama most definitely reminds of some of the best material that has emerged from the Dardenne brothers, but it is free of the miserabilist ambience and politics that are usually channeled through it. It is why Ola’s emotional ups and downs feel so incredibly sincere – she is just a young girl who is suddenly forced to make rational decisions in an irrational and strikingly cold borderless world.

The other thing this film does really well is reveal how in the era of instant messaging everyone, young and old, is a loner. Even the seemingly happy individuals that are spending time in groups – like the strangers Ola meets in Dublin and goes clubbing with, or her father’s former Polish roommates – are very much on their own. All are surrounded by cheerful ‘friends’, but they are people that mean either very little or nothing at all to them, which is why their lives are simply cycles of repetitive, meaningless and instantly forgettable experiences.

While traying to get the company that employed her father to pay some sort of an insurance compensation, Ola encounters a Romanian immigrant (Cosmina Stratan, Beyond the Hills) who has had a relationship with him. She works in a hair salon and has to endure an abusive boss because she is trying to make enough to complete a degree course that would help her redirect her life. She is older than Ola but just as helpless because the rational decisions she is supposed to make to improve her life are utterly worthless. The manner in which they connect and then part ways is absolutely heartbreaking because it effectively proves that despite being from different countries and at different stages of their lives both have been placed on the same path to failure by the same global forces.

The film has a very clean and sharp contemporary appearance, but somehow still manages to produce a lot of nuanced visuals. They are not carefully stylized, just wonderfully shot cool and cold visuals with distinct naturalistic qualities. Earlier this year, Piotr Sobocinski Jr. won Best Cinematography Award for his contribution to the film at the Polish Film Awards.

I Never Cry Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.39:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, I Never Cry arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Montage Pictures/Eureka Entertainment.

This film looked terrific on my system. While this should not be too surprising considering that it was shot very recently and with modern equipment, I thought that the visuals were some of the best that I have seen this year. Indeed, clarity, sharpness, depth, and fluidity were simply outstanding, so if you have a big screen you can probably use this release as 'reference material'. Colors are cool and cold, but there are plenty of unique darker nuances. Image stability is excellent. Terrific presentation. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

I Never Cry Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: Polish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (with rather significant portions of English). Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

This film has a fully digital soundtrack, so the 5.1 track replicates the original mix. I thought that the lossless was flawless. While dynamic intensity isn't going to flex the muscles of your system, you will immediately be able to tell that the basics -- clarity, sharpness, stability, balance, etc. -- are fantastic. There are no technical anomalies to report in our review.

I Never Cry Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Booklet - an illustrated collector's booklet featuring an essay by film critic Anna Smith as well as technical credits.

I Never Cry Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Had this release not reached my desk, I would have missed Piotr Domalewski's I Never Cry. Guaranteed. I don't know anything about Domalewski's previous or more recent work, but after my experience with I Never Cry, I am convinced that I have to see everything he has done. His new film, Operation Hyacinth, about a young officer in communist Warsaw becoming frustrated with a murder investigation and setting out to discover the truth already sounds like a masterpiece. Kudos to Montage Pictures/Eureka Entertainment for bringing I Never Cry to Blu-ray. I liked it a lot. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.