I belong to the tiny subculture of polka fans, loving the music both genuinely and ironically, and believing this unjustly maligned and ignored music tradition is one of the great “underground” musical cultures in America. Imagine my delight, then, when I tuned in to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently and saw Jack Black — in a gaudy red suit and blond wig, emanating over-the-top-cheerful charisma — leading a crack polka band to promote the film The Polka King, which premiered at last year’s Sundance festival and had its Netflix debut on January 12.
However, my delight was followed by semi-disappointment on the musical front when I watched the film the following night only to find that polka itself is mostly a backdrop and an incidental feature. Instead, The Polka King is more obsessed with another five-letter “p” word: “Ponzi.” Directed by Maya Forbes and written by Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, based on the documentary The Man Who Would Be Polka King, the film is the real-life story of determined (and ethically slippery) polka bandleader and Polish immigrant to Pennsylvania Jan Lewan (pronounced with the Americanizing hard “j” or without — he doesn’t care), so eager to assimilate into his adopted country’s lifestyle and enjoy its fruits that he almost accidentally segues into a life of fraud.
“I have America up the wazoo,” says the charmingly upbeat and endearingly language-mangling Lewan (Jack Black). “All you have to do is believe.” His powerful belief in America, feeding the family, and upward mobility was lined with fraudulent investor duping, which landed him in prison in 2004. Thus, his story also takes on that pressing American-dream story — the one about dreams turned to disillusion on an epic scale.