Moonlighting

Jerzy Skolimowski (1982)

UK, West Germany

The film is scripted and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, one of the rare East European film-makers who remained true to leftist critical commitments after they emigrated to the West. The film features Jeremy Irons as a Polish building contractor, Nowak, who leads a group of workers to London where they will offer cheap labor in renovating the house of a government official based there. As the only English-speaking member of the group, he has to manage the project and the men over a number of weeks, with financial and psychological anxieties looming. Nowak learns that martial law has been declared in Poland, but decides to hide the news from his co-workers in order to bring the project to a successful end. Moonlighting is one of Irons’ best performances, a tense and engrossing drama that addresses issues of displacement and identity.

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