Kieslowski, probably Poland's most important filmmaker alongside Andrzej Wajda, started his career fresh out of film school making shot documentaries and industrial information films. From the early criticial (at leats in the film school he graduated from) success of Urzad (1966) through to the late 70s Krxystof had een content making these films for money (so in the future he could risk investment in unprofitable but more artistic feature films). However, in the late 70s/early 80s, around the time Talking Heads and Camera Buff were released grander artistic ambitions started displaying themselves in the Pole's work. Thus, in 1985 Kieslowski took one further step away from his early documentary style into the realm of metaphysical cinema with the critically acclaimed No End.
Filmed by his long time collaborator (and fellow film school graduate) Jacek Petrycki with haunting music from the great Zbigniew Preisner, No End is a family drama wrapped in political tension wrapped in melancholy. In the opening scene we find out that the man who we initially believe to be the protagonist, Antek (played calmly by Jerzy Radziwilowicz) is in fact already dead. He's dead yet he stays to watch over his widow Urszula (played by Grazyna Szapolowska who had recently appeared as Livia in Károly Makk's Hungarian success, Egymásra nézve [1982]) and his son Jacek (Krzysztof Krzeminski). In the wake of the recent death of her husband Urszula has trouble coping, a fact not hepled when the wife of one of her husband's clients comes forward looking for a file. Urszula can't give the woman the file but suggests the soon-to-be retired lawyer Mieczyslaw Labrador (Aleksander Bardini), who was her husband's mentor, should take the case - he agrees as it is to be his final swan song. As the case progresses the corruptability of Polish justice [as it then was] and the presures of living under the socialist system in which strikes are banned come to the fore; meanwhile Urzula tries everything from sleeping with an Englishman to hypnotism (by a dubious practitioner who may or may not have taken advantage of her) in order to overcome her relentless grief. In the end, through the bleakness there is a ray of hope for the mother and her son although in many respects it is not a happy one.
The film has as many strengths as it does weaknesses. Critics have said, much to the disdain of the director, that the film is actually two separate movies. Firstly the story of the widow dealing with her grief, and secondly the political prisoner fighting an injust sytem with the help of corrupt officials, a battle which will shatter many youthful ideals of those involved. For me however, the film is a conflagratio of these issues, it exists at the point where the personal meets the national - where man (or in this case, woman) meets society. Urzula's problems can be seen as a metaphor for Polish society struggling to move on under the weight of socialism to a new future leaving the pre-war past behind. But this in itself is an oversimplification of matters, Kieslowski is dealing here with real people with real emotions, with deep souls who do not always make the best judgements available and it is this complexity of juxtaposition between the people and the metaphor that makes this work so enthralling; complexity which reaches a dramatic pinnacle in the scene between Urzula and the Englishman that comes across as perversly erotic, both utterly fascinating and morally reprehensible at the same time. Testament indeed to the acting talents of Grazyna Szapolowska.
This narrative complexity is just one ingredient though, in a far greater whole. Preisner's deceptively simplistic music, utilising simple chord patterns and melodies in a minor key to produce a truly sadening ambience, combines effervescently with Petrycki's sublime camerawork to produce some truly unforgettable, poweful cinematic moments that indellibly etch themselves into the viwer's brain forever. From an aesthetic point of view the film is a true feast of technique and artistry. With a heavy fly-on-the-wall documentary style we, the audience, become totally and irreversibly enmeshed in the lives of the characters until it is impossible to resist the sorrow and joy they feel. Sitting comfortably in Kieslowski's early oevre there are many times however when the true transitional quality of this picture fills the frame, when it is clear that a grander ambition lies behind it to portray something not only human but in many ways metacinemtic, not least in the uplifting metaphysical denoument that has left so may viewers inexplicably unhappy. Maybe this ending leaves them unhappy precisely because it is so close to truth, refusing to pander to archetype and cliché there is only one way out for the protagonist n matter how much you will another solution to surface. It is true to say that not everything is tied up by the end, yet again though this shows the documentary routes of the filmmaker - that despite its more fanciful moments this films foundation lie firmly and irrevocably in beautiful, if melancholic reality.
A truly wonderful film, 8/10
0 comments:
Post a Comment