Abstract

The Land of Aeternal Hapiness is Wojciech Sitek's review article dedicated to the first monograph in the Polish language, dedicated to films on coming of age. Karolina Kostyra, the author of the book Wiosenna bujność traw. Obrazy przyrody w filmach o dorastaniu,  observes that within the coming of age  genre nature affects young people in a particularly significant way. During puberty, it is always so fertile and expansive that it abducts the adolescent into its depths and transforms them forever, preparing them to face adult life. At times, the publication, which nominally represents the discipline of film studies, transmogrifies into a general reflection upon the world and the place of the human in its all-encompassing order. The Author attempts to penetrate the essence by resorting to a variety of sources: she seeks adequate tropes in the Jungian mythographic criticism, she alludes to the motifs of magical and religious symbols as described by Mircea Eliade, and follows Bruno Bettelheim in reflecting upon the externalizing function of a folk tale. Her personal, emotionally vested reflection and the melancholy tone of the book closely correspond with the overarching themes of the coming=of-age films. The yearning thus has its source in the experiences of the proatonists as well as in the personal quest of the Author, who remains vividily engaged in her account of the tales of the borderlands between childhood and adulthood.