Border guard Jan, a character from “Green Border” played by Tomasz Włosok, is a complex, multifaceted figure—someone anyone, including a leftist woman, can identify with. He is a deeply honest character who does not want to dishonor his uniform in any way, yet what his superiors and the Polish government force him to do is disgraceful.
Jan screams in the car, howling with helplessness and rage at what he has been thrown into—as a border guard—by the Law and Justice government. He has a loving pregnant wife, is building his own home and wants to serve his country with honor. And those in power take all that honor away from him, using orders to force him into acts unworthy of a human being.
Jan represents the border guards and that symbolic uniform. He tries to save his own dignity and, through it, the dignity of the uniform and the role. The film makes this clear and states it very plainly. The scene in which Jan locks up his unfinished house, secures it with a sturdy padlock, but leaves a sleeping bag and water beneath it for those in need, is a key scene. A deeply symbolic one. He does not want to let strangers into his home. He has both the right and the duty to do so, but he also does not want this to make him stop being a human being who has a duty to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty.
How do foreign media write about us in connection with the film? “Green Border, le film polonais qui embarrasse le pouvoir/ Green Border, the Polish film that embarrasses those in power” was the headline of Le Figaro’s article about the film. A French center-right newspaper. There is no mention there of dishonoring the uniform. Because what kind of honor can be insulted by a single film?