‘syllabus’ is a thing I, mike, do sometimes, or at least have done a few times before, where I go as deep as I can into an individual director’s filmography and take notes on the themes and autobiographical nature of each movie as well as noting the supplementary material I absorb along the way. cool, thx!
krysztof kieslowski, a guy whose movies you’ve either seen all of or a name you recognize but have not engaged with due to fear of it being the first step towards owning a criterion tote bag, would not have made the decalogue and the three colors trilogy and that movie about there being two veroniques had the polish police not arrested him and confiscated his camera while he was shooting a documentary at a subway station in 1980. they let him go shortly after—turns out they were just looking for a murderer and hoped the then-documentarian had caught some footage of the suspect during his shoot. but kieslowski was so horrified at the thought that he could help the police in any capacity as a filmmaker that he decided then to make the full transition to fiction filmmaking.
this isn’t entirely true—it’s an anecdote in the book kieslowski on kieslowski, which is full of isn’t-entirely-truisms rattled off by a subject who often contradicts himself, in this case claiming at several other points in the book that the move to fiction was fueled by guilt with interfering with his subjects’ lives. one reason the first claim rings less true to me than the latter is that he continued to churn out docs for a few years after this occurred. but it’s also the latter claim rather than an ACAB agenda which lent itself in various ways to becoming an integral theme in his movies more and more up until the point where he retired—at the height of his fame and only a few years before his death—due to that same sense of guilt.
(note: I do wanna mention another anecdote, which appears to be entirely true: after he swore of documentary filmmaking he embarked on an ambitious doc project where he filmed court cases involving citizens protesting the strict laws of oppressively conservative party rule—but after quickly realizing that the number of guilty verdicts plummeted whenever his camera was in the room he scrapped the original project (it later morphed into his fiction film no end) but continued showing up with a camera but no film. I think it was—as everything seemed to be with him—a moral battle of meddling with the lives of real people versus using his privilege to inspire real change, whether that be communicating the harsh conditions of polish life under party rule so subtly that the censors didn’t pick up on it or physically getting in the way of injustice with his camera.)
but it is almost uniformly observed among anyone with a mubi subscription that no one in the history of film has ever fucking freaked it as hard as this man over the course of the 10 years before his death, tirelessly manufacturing a deeply complex filmography which has really only since been challenged by the distinct philosophy and experimental formalism of rick linklater—another guy who’s just really obsessed with demolishing our infatuation with one-dimensional, cash-grab, dead-end sequalism.
kieslowski started out making movies about simple-to-address-yet-impossible-to-resolve moral dilemmas specific to poland’s political present which dramatically ballooned with every successive film to the point where they became entirely more universal, as well as to the point where he literally needed to rewrite spatial and temporal rules in order to cram the ever-growing complexities of decision making into a feature runtime—and then he rewrote those rules with what is effective ten movies released on top of each other and vaguely connected through the canonical moral code of laws they’re loosely adapted from.
more than most other directors I’ve spent this much time with, it was fairly simple to divide up his filmography into the three distinct chapters they appear in below. the prologue, ‘social realism,’ is fairly self-explanatory, covering each feature-length film (only wrote about movies that were an hour-plus) he released while the focus of his movies was still on the effect his country’s inhumane political system had on everyday life (the years attached to the movies, by the way, are more or less correct—so many of his movies were shelved for their perceived unsavory political agendas or otherwise went through weird distribution issues that I’m really not even sure the order is correct).
part one is titled ‘ethical hell’ after the unofficial title of a college course in decalogue 8, and it refers to the era when kieslowski was making movies within the movement widely known as the ‘cinema of moral anxiety’ (also translated from polish as ‘cinema of distrust’)—a term he hated, possibly because he was a man of refined taste and aesthetically did not vibe with terminology that sounds metal as absolute hell. as an extension of this section, I situated the decalogue and the two films which are extended versions of two episodes of that anthology together under a title which is, I believe, verbatim, one of the ten commandments.
after that comes ‘musique,’ the final chapter of kieslowski’s career in which his movies not only feel entirely fueled by his love of music but had even evolved into the realm of a bizarre visual poetry due in part, I believe, to that passion, which comes through in his capacity to edit these final movies (all of which were co-produced by french companies and are all at least in part about his relocation to france) as if he was instead composing music.
the final section is an extremely truncated look at his legacy, comprised of two (of several) feature films adapted from his unmade and unfinished scripts written with his longtime writing partner krzysztof piesiewicz (the lawyer he met and worked with on the aforementioned abandoned courtroom doc, who continued to co-write scripts throughout the rest of kieslowski’s career), and an interesting example of how his influence was poorly translated to hollywood filmmaking (europeans, on the other hand, knew what was up—the structure of blind chance was clearly an influence on run lola run, while the distinct visual palette on amelie looks like it belongs within kieslowski’s french era).
when I began this project I was so turned off by kieslowski’s first half decade of output, which seemed intentional about being the exact opposite of what I, personally, look for in a movie—but while those stories were specifically intended to subtly chip away at the evils of a political system so far removed in time and space from what’s familiar to me that I miss every single political reference in them, there’s an incidental humanism there that mostly made them worthwhile to look up (not to mention the fact that history repeats itself enough that much of it felt fairly relevant). in fact I was surprised to learn that the cinema of moral anxiety was considered a political movement since kieslowski’s movies I’d already seen that fell into that category seemed to stand on their own without condemning specific leaders and policies (which, it turns out, they absolutely do).
but taken together these films are a pretty comprehensive portrait of a guy discovering in real time doc filmmaking’s shortcomings in recording genuine human feelings and learning to embrace the ambiguity of these emotions, something that couldn’t possibly be translated to film. and rather than trying, he did what no other director’s really attempted: to simply make us guess
recommended supplements
BOOKS
double lives, second chances by annette insdorf easily the most comprehensive, succinct, and intelligent-yet-extremely-readable book on kieslowski I could find in english. v insightful readings of even the vaguest moments of the most abstract movies but then like….every time she begins to sound too academic she’ll throw in a fun sentence that literally ends with an exclamation point!
kieslowski on kieslowski edited by danusia stok one of those books where it feels like they locked the subject in a room with a tape recorded and a vague outline for talking points and did little to no editing with the transcript. lots of great stories and anecdotes and observations and extremely critical comments about his own movies (especially where each one ‘went wrong’ lol), though my man goes on some absolute tangents
of elephants and toothaches edited by eva badowska and francesca parmeggiani insdorf does a great job of succinctly summing up the decalogue in her book but also that shit is really dense and therefore an entire book on those movies may be worth the time (heads up for the dumbasses like me out there that this one is way more academic)
variations on destiny and chance by marek haltof honestly pretty redundant with everything else here, really just read/included it since I generally love this series. author is clearly polish—like half this book is either polish political stuff or just a list of obscure and peripherally related yet supposedly influential/influenced polish film titles, like none of which I’ve heard of
VISUALS
eastern european movies a subscription to this service comes in handy for all of the pre-french movies, though there’s also a ton of shorts on there that I couldn’t find anywhere else. worth the price of admission for the poster art alone (well I guess that’s free to look at but)
short films and documentaries (1966-1980) most of the early stuff is pretty tedious ‘life in poland under party leadership’ shorts he made to challenge the censors which is cool in theory but doesn’t do much for someone like me who’s watching these movies outside of a historical/political lens. the fiction works (‘tramway,’ ‘concert of wishes,’ and especially ‘pedestrian subway’) are cool and feature interesting visual themes and settings that remain in his movies until the end of his career, while a few of the docs like ‘first love’ and ‘the photograph’ are great even if they’re borderline fictionalized
the face (1966) a friend’s short film he starred in as an artist with seemingly the direct opposite temperament you see in those interviews with him in the ’90s where he’s calmly chain-blasting cigs and there always seems to be a cat around that he’s pspspspsp-ing between tedious and pessimistic philosophizing
kieslowski – dialogue (1991) hour-long doc where talking-head kieslowski repeats a bunch of stuff from kieslowski on kieslowski, tho it’s worth a watch for all the behind the scenes stuff from veronique to get a general sense of how he directs. like there’s an incredible moment at the beginning where he’s two feet from irene jacob recording her aria scene absolutely going to town on a bowl of soup for some reason (couldn’t find an english dub online but this is an extra on the criterion version of veronique)
krysztof kieslowski: I’m so-so (1995) mostly thoughts either covered in the aforementioned books or cited word-for-word in them. worth a watch tho due to the fact that his friends made it so it is from what I can tell the only recorded footage of kieslowski Actin Up
prologue: social realism (1976, 1981)
personel (1976) coming-of-age story about a greasy little 19 y/o polish griffin dunne having his dreams of what the art world looks like shattered by unexpected behind-the-scenes realities (artists being shitty, perceived systems of good actually functioning as bureaucracies that will ultimately fuck you over). amalgamation of everything kieslowski had done prior: verite documentary style and loosely scripted short fiction, focus on unionized workers and the arts, meetings turning into politicized debates, shy/youthful infatuations with girls on public transit. obv an autobiographical statement about diving into filmmaking and the first of many movies he made which he thought were specifically about poland but still feel pretty universally relatable nearly 50 yrs later. wish he’d kept the B&W cinematography from his early shorts. shit was crisp af
the scar (1976) exact type of examination of bureaucracy and party conflict kieslowski claims to have realized was a tedious film subject well before this was released—tho it works as a flipside to personel’s story of a teen being forced to choose between work and private life with this movie instead seeing a ~60 y/o man as its subject in the same predicament. certainly feels autobiographical in that capacity, with this movie exemplifying the sandpaper-rough early-career polish-TV borderline-industrial films he churned out that clash so hard with his later-career surreally-shot french films starring hot people. that pic of the deer huffing a cig is not at all representative of this movie btw. just thought it looked cool
the calm (1976) movie about a guy trying to have it all and winding up with nothing in a way that is eerily similar to thief (and also a fairly straightforward cautionary tale about what happens when you choose your boss to be best man at your wedding). whole thing kinda coasts on the dramatic irony of knowing that things will not end well after that one-sided friendship is forged, and in true social-realist-era kieslowski fashion things end worse than imagined. wonder if part of the reason he moved on from these emotionally sterile TV movies was the fact that he accidentally started working with an actor (jerzy stuhr) who it’s hard not to care about in all his movies
short working day (1981) flipping of dog day afternoon’s script where it’s the working class who has the symbol of fascistic power trapped in a sweaty interior. kieslowski seemed to be interested in michael scott syndrome during this period—for better or for worse—empathizing with the guy who doesn’t seem to really believe in anything besides mediating conflict between the working class and their oppressors only to lose allies on both sides. it’s the type of moral conflict that lends itself to the ethical pretzeling of thought in the rest of his ’80s output but like….by this point his politics are agreeable but entirely predictable and since there’s absolutely nothing interesting going on cinematically, and his movies are almost entirely humorless without jerzy stuhr, there’s really nothing of interest here. incredible that this movie was banned until the 1990s due to censorship yet when he could finally show it kieslowski refused because he knew it blew so hard
pt. 1: ethical hell (1979-1987)
camera buff (1979) movie about how much the people in your life immediately resent you when you get into film. I’m sure it was unintentional as there are countless questions of morality swirling around here but the fact that this is explicitly a movie about a filmmaker’s life falling apart because he can’t balance his art and his family life feels like a vicious subtweet of altman, lynch, and any other male director who seemingly blew off familial obligations without there really being any evidence of them struggling with the decision. everything else here seems to reflect kieslowski’s anxieties at the time—the moral obligation of objectivity in doc filmmaking, balancing filmmaking against religion, the progression of making movies about the outside world to turning inward. speaking of dunking on american directors did they make the hot-headed jackass tv filmmaker look exactly like scorsese on purpose
no end (1985) movie about how extremely differently personal and political factions take the loss of a vital member. two unrelated scripts (labor strike story/courtroom drama & ghost story/romantic drama) woven together in a way that gives meaning to a movie I don’t think would otherwise resonate much outside of its setting—one that contrasts complex political issues (which can be resolved within resistance/support groups) and legal issue (which can be resolved, no matter how ludicrously, by the court) with complex familial issues that continually manifest for the grieving individual in various guilt-inducing recreations of the tragedy until they die. movie feels a bit autobiographical from the perspective of the wife in her anxiety about accepting that she doesn’t care about any issues beyond her personal life as she grieves, which helps usher in the new era of kieslowski movies where guys say shit like ‘someone who’s chosen to live must be able to endure a lot’ lmao
blind chance (1987) *slaps roof of 120 min feature film run time* this bad boy can fit so many fucking strands of morally anxious plotlines in it! didn’t anticipate it being this much fun watching kieslowski’s movies chronologically and seeing the number of moralistic dilemmas dramatically ballooning with each successive feature inventing new structures for cramming them all in there—this one uses run lola run’s three-lives-until-game-over format to meditate on the illusion of being able to juggle kieslowski’s Big 3 themes of work, politics, and family as he continues to assure us you can only pick one to pursue and even that can be too much. also features plenty of kieslowski’s secondary Big 3: indecision, train stations, and getting your private life absolutely annihilated by an employer taking advantage of your amiability. or, alternatively, a guy passing by shouting ‘fuck her good!’ at the protagonist and his lady
pt. 1.5: love thy god damn neighbor (1988-1989)
a short film about love (1988) swapping ‘I’ve been stalking and harassing you and keeping all of your mail’ for ‘I watch you through the window’ as my go-to opener after watching this. huge shift in style for kieslowski here in being his first movie entirely free of party politics and laundry lists of tangled moral dilemmas as well as his first ‘vague and mysterious energy’ movie we’ve come to love the guy for. ‘mysterious energy’ in this case arrives in the form of some 19 y/o boy sociopathically violating the privacy of his mid-30s female neighbor who oddly does not seem to mind, leading to a meditation on male possession instinct and the totally immature lack of forethought behind it—my man acts like he’s in some sort of hostage situation once his ultimate sexual fantasy is finally realized. feel like ‘guy watches neighbor’s private life through his window’ has become played out in film, who’s got the courage to do one about my relationship to the 60 y/o man pounding cigs outside my window, in a power stance, staring hard in my direction while I work every morning
a short film about killing (1988) ah yellow, my favorite installment in the three colors trilogy. sort of like taxi driver if the coin-flip existentialism had gone the other way (and also, of course, if the taxi driver was the victim and not the loner with violent tendencies; and also, of course, if the mohawk was intentionally punk; and also, of course, if travis bickle was played by an evolved version of the kid from gummo). revisits blind chance’s philosophy on how small decisions affect major life outcomes only this time utilizing hyperlink cinema conventions to amplify this cinema’s moral anxiety. obvious parallel drawn between the evils of murder and capital ‘also murder’ punishment, but also def some paralleling of loneliness and disillusionment between social classes as depicted in the upwardly mobile lawyer and the spiraling punk outsider. I am so, so serious when I say this: they should make all movies this god damn yellow
the decalogue (1989) kieslowski’s take on the housing-complex-confined horrors of shivers only like…..instead of STDs it’s an epidemic of 10 impossibly intricate moral dilemmas occurring simultaneously. totally agnostic take on the OT that posits the open-endedness and total uncertainty behind each of the 10 commandments over the course of 10 hour-long short films—arguably linked to each one—that all roughly takes place in the same massive brutalist apartment building. unbelievably opaque at times if not outright feeling like a pious call to christianity, such as the opening statement dramatically depicting a vengeful OT god killing a firstborn due to his dad worshiping a computer. but like….every character has such incredibly complex/unspoken motives and thought processes in each episode that everything is open-ended enough that, yeah, you could prob make a case for this being shown in sunday school. just hope, like, nobody points out that the only religious figure in decalogue five is a priest who’s summoned before a graphic hanging
pt. 2: musique (1991-1994)
the double life of véronique (1991) movie that’s probably responsible for most of the things I like about amelie. extension of a minor plot point in decalogue 9, not to mention an extension of the broader idea prevalent throughout that series that the audience doesn’t necessarily need to know what the characters are thinking. this movie seems to do a better job of expressing music in non-musical ways than what music journalism’s doing with its overwhelming sense of ambiguity contrasting with the rational either/or structuralism of blind chance and opting for a ‘why not both’ approach. plenty of kieslowskiisms here—train stations, demonstrations in the streets, kids peeking into women’s windows—tho ultimately its meaning feels rooted in his longstanding guilt with using real people to create his movies. also almost feels like an in-joke that the only reference to moral/legal matters is a very minor and extremely superficial scene where veronique casually agrees to lie in divorce court for a friend lol
three colors: blue (1993) movie about the crazy things grief makes you do—like disaffectedly sleep with yr newly deceased husband’s close friend, or furiously house a big slab of hard candy—and vibing as an alternative to suicide or acknowledging the past in literally any capacity. presents a more rational scenario for a kieslowski character to possess consistently mysterious (if not irrational) motives (as they do) while feeling autobiographical both in the sense that the story parallels kieslowski’s own rebirth as a guy who makes extremely european movies in france and touching on the invasion of privacy that comes with celebrity which ultimately led to his retirement a few years after this (further paralleled in the ‘please don’t posthumously publish my dead husband’s unfinished work’ plotline preceding kieslowski’s writing partner selling their scripts after he died). weirdly compassionate, optimistic, dogmatic, and even morally straightforward for a kieslowski movie. also introduced me to the forbidden late-night treat that is café et glace
three colors: white (1994) movie about white stuff….y’know birdshit, toilets, yizz, that sort of thing. aside from being lowkey vulgar this feels like an odd combination of a return to the extreme polishness—albeit a surreally capitalist poland worthy of an entirely new and unexplored set of criticisms—of his early movies with the linearity and relative optimism of the french ones with fairly little room for moral flailing. I guess in the middle of that hardly-overlapping venn diagram is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t romance plot (again, a very-polish cinematic concept married with a very-french one) pushed along with specific moments of male sexual humiliation borrowed from short film about love and decalogue nine. the pitch ‘a movie called ‘white’ (‘blanc’) that’s a black comedy about shooting blanks’ is about as tightly knotted as any late-period kieslowski movie’s structure
three colors: red (1994) absolutely dizzying amount of parallels within its tight 98 mins, not to mention within the three colors trilogy and really within the full kieslowski filmography: his early interest in the evils of surveillance ironically being condemned by a women whose face is blown up to an enormous size and plastered on the wall of a busy intersection, numerous examples of ‘doing the right thing’ dominoing into unintended heartbreaking circumstances, the extra-legal ramifications of a judge’s sentences affecting more than just those on trial—all told with hardly a mention of poland while a famously french actor says cryptic existentialist shit like ‘I want nothing.’ first 2/3 feel like kieslowski rationalizing his pessimism as a crankier version of jim stewart in rear window until a younger optimist fixes his ass like a way less racist gran torino where we don’t have to hear the director sing at the end. but damn that bottle-recycling scene at the end—within the context of the trilogy—is a gd touching moment for him to go out on
epilogue: heaven and hell
peripherally related: sliding doors dir. peter howitt (1998) movie that turns the fatalistic and overwhelmingly open-ended structural experiment of blind chance into gimmick in order to just kinda be like ‘ha ha ha wouldn’t it be so crazy’ about literally the exact same scenario kieslowski’s movie uses as a jumping off point while occasionally integrating veronique’s plotpoint that she can vaguely sense her double. rather than sectioning these different timelines off into different acts they interwove the two storylines—in which band-aid gwen paltrow and very-1998-haircut gwen paltrow put up with two different clown ass white boys: cartoon clive owen and a guy who will literally quote entire monty python bits, voices and everything—in a way that frequently makes you confused about which gwen is which but also about what purpose this gimmick serves beyond the filmmakers presumably not being able to decide which of two screenplays to make. really a shame kieslowski never felt the need to use that silly ~magic~ sound effect to denote that we’re switching timelines
as screenwriter: big animal dir. jerzy stuhr (2000) movie about a community coming together to prevent a guy from entering his camel era. very clear echoes of kieslowski’s other comic work with jerzy stuhr—plot about coming into possession of a unique commodity and the temptation of selling it in spite of its tremendous non-financial value while others scheme to steal it clearly mirrors the plot of decalogue 10, while the town’s vulturistic response to this guy deciding to own a camel never progressing beyond viewing it as a financial asset continues the capitalistic humor of white. something about a slow-paced movie from 2000 about an animal mysteriously materializing in an eastern european locale causing hysteria among its residents filmed in depressive black-and-white rings familiar. bummed we were deprived of kieslowski’s midlife-crisis-guy era
as screenwriter: heaven dir. tom tykwer (2002) movie about nepotism babies giving back. also 96 mins of the most inexplicable atmosphere a movie has ever possessed and I can’t manage to decide whether it’s intentional/good or, more likely, tykwer’s misguided attempt to channel kieslowski (the piano score; the occasional weird camera placements) rather than just adapt his idea into his own distinct style (took me my second viewing to realize this isn’t actually sci-fi in spite of the flight-simulator opening scene, the shaved heads, and the domestic terrorist plot all feeling like genre staples). deals with chance and parallels with the question ‘what if a cleaning lady showed up at the worst possible moment more than once?’ while also covering how negative consequences are still inevitable when you alter the timeline for good as explored in red. too bad kieslowski couldn’t have edited this before he died too