Krzysztof Kieślowski — birthday memory, part 2

Endless [1985]

Endless [1985] is the first fruit of the cooperation of the Kieślowski-Preisner-Piesiewicz tercet. The legend and aura that accompanied the pictures overtook the film itself. The director accompanied the lawyer with the camera (or even two) during martial law trials and this had a real impact on the sentences handed down in the cases. Over time, the mere presence of a camera, not necessarily on or containing tape, was enough. Not much of this material made it into the film, but the judges' chilling effect became a fact. Kieślowski suffered because of this, criticized both by the authorities and the opposition. Some wanted to use the easing of repression, while others (including Wajda) accused him of collaborating with the regime. The rather accidental choice of Jerzy Radziwiłowicz for the role of a ghost is a formal procedure realized during many hours of shooting with his participation, but the character of the “marble man” a potential viewer can notice on the screen only four times. The film suffered an artistic defeat completely undeservedly. The authorities were ashamed to show it, just as the opposition at the time was ashamed to praise it, because it reflected the failure of those responsible for the martial law as well as ordinary people, as the director himself emphasized, arguing that the victory of one or the other (the authorities or the opposition) was only a delusion to which we succumb. The pessimism of the director and the world depicted in the film met with the enthusiasm of only a few viewers who had a chance to see the picture in the cinema. They saw themselves, the truth of the reality known to them. The church authorities were not delighted that the suicide of the heroine turns out to be the only fair way out and does not take into account the social role of the mother, becoming an escape from the ubiquitous gray. The picture did not get the national gloss of quality it deserved, and the bitter Kieślowski, tired of the situation associated with the games around him, less than a decade later gave up making films in the domestic cinema for good, although he never left Poland.

Short film about killing [1988]

A short film about killing [1988] is one of two parts of the Decalogue that have seen a theatrical version. The project to film the Decalogue came from Krzysztof Piesiewicz, who, as a neophyte, drew attention to the Judeo-Christian aspect in Polish cinema, which was fashionable in the 1980s and wrote the script for all the parts together with Krzysztof the director. Interestingly, the pictures for the individual Decalogues were taken by various operators of the picture, with only the repetition of Piotr Sobociński (Decalogue III and Decalogue IX respectively), while the figure of an anonymous witness to the events (the role of Artur Barcisio) is present in every part except the last. Decalogue V, which in the television version is the shortened equivalent of the Short Film about Killing, differs significantly in that the plot has been rearranged, the ending has been changed and the narrative about the protagonist has been flattened to the theme of crime and punishment. Paradoxically, the death penalty in Poland was abolished within a decade of the film's release, and the picture itself found its way not only to the time of the political breakthrough, but perhaps above all to the discourse concerning an essential element of oppression, and at the same time a tool of every totalitarian regime. The idea of the screenwriters to leave the world of politics did not come true, but the film was appreciated in Poland and abroad thanks to the pictures of Sławomir Idziak (the famous green filters that dominated the chromatics of the film — the cinematographer himself made several hundred of them by hand) and the brilliant role of the debutant Mirosław Baka. The short film about killing received the first ever European Film Award in 1988. It is worth emphasizing the special attitude and distance of the director to the matter in which he created worlds accessible to viewers: in the clinical scene of the murder (supposedly one of the longest among those filmed at that time), the victim falls out of his jaw, which the director considered a comic moment (this shot was repeated a dozen times) in the film, which in his opinion was about violence, lack of control over it and the search for his way, about the paradox of life.

Short film about love [1988]

The short film about love [1988] is the second full-length picture corresponding to the television version of Decalogue VI. Grażyna Szapolowska and Olaf Lubaszenka were chosen for the main roles. For the young actor it was the first mature film role (not counting Jerzy Ridan's Marymont Sonata according to Hłaska's prose), and he was also Kieślowski's assistant for several parts of the Decalogue. Seventeen different locations giving the feeling that we are communicating with the characters in two separate apartments, and Witold Adamek with the director with a long lens from a two-story tower through the window peering in the cold Grażyna Szapolowska. At the request of the actress, the ending of the film became more fairy, although, according to Kieślowski, we are watching the love of two people who suffer and this suffering becomes their share, before they understand each other, before they establish a common code. In the television version, the story hangs on a false alternative of choice, which is faced by the main character. There is no choice, and the hero is focused on himself. Kieślowski was closer to this solution. The film won recognition, received Golden Lions of Gdańsk (including the Short Film about Killing), and personal success was achieved by Grażyna Szałowska and Witold Adamek. The film was also appreciated abroad, including in San Sebastian. Not without significance remained the music of Zbigniew Preisner, which gently seeps, filling the space between the dialogues.

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