Kieślowski’s Pain

A still from "Krzysztof Kieslowski, Trzy kolory" 

directed by Natalia Koryncka-Gruz

Hard to believe that it has already been 30 years since Kieślowski’s passing.

I think of him as one of the most innovative storytellers in film history. His uniqueness comes, in part, from the goals he sets for his stories. Most films try to answer questions such as: Who did it? What will happen? Why did something happen? His approach—and that of his co-writer, Krzysztof Piesiewicz—seems different. The anecdote is secondary to the question the anecdote is trying to explore.

So when we become engaged in his stories on screen, we are actually participating in his—and Piesiewicz’s—pondering about how the world and human relationships work.

The characters in the Three Colors trilogy, for example, are not simply them. They are us, transported into situations that perhaps we haven’t lived through (yet?), but which nevertheless touch something vital to our existence. The widow in Blue copes with loss. The model and the judge in Red negotiate between empathy and cynicism. The hairdresser in White yearns for his lost self-worth. In The Double Life of Véronique, Kieślowski dissects the mysterious—perhaps metaphysical—connections between people.

There is an extensive interview with Kieślowski, recorded while he was shooting White. It is called Krzysztof Kieślowski: Trzy kolory, directed by Natalia Koryncka-Gruz, and is available on TVP VOD.

Only after hearing a few of his remarks there did it hit me that his films weren’t simply artistic or intellectual exercises. They seem to have been deeply painful explorations of his own personality and of the way he saw himself in the world.

Although I think I remember being jolted, while watching some of his films years ago, by the realization that it was his pain speaking to me through the screen. I had long forgotten that feeling, until watching—or perhaps rewatching—this documentary a few days ago.

I remember a few thoughts from his interview there. My repeating them here may not be verbatim; it’s rather what reached me from the screen and stayed with me after I finished watching the documentary:

Kieślowski says that, for him, the most important thing in storytelling is tone.

That what happens in the stomach is the most important. He means, I think, our emotions—the visceral response to what we experience.

That what matters most is what we don’t share, don’t speak about, what we are ashamed of.

That for him storytelling is an attempt to get to know oneself in the most naked, sensitive, probing way.

That it is terribly important to be able to say, “Yes, I’m weak, but I need to say this.”

That he is losing patience—with everything (that's a very telling admission).

That what matters are the opportunities to say something that people are too shy to tell each other.

That what is needed is simply trust in reality itself.

On the same platform, there is another excellent documentary about Kieślowski as a young boy, when he followed his tuberculosis-stricken father through various sanatoria in Poland, eventually reaching Sokołowsko, now so closely associated with Kieślowski.  The documentary, despite struggling with a shortage of archival material, is also fantastic.