Light and shadow rambling
♪ Play music and watch as you listen ♪
In honor of the master of cinema
The 25th anniversary of the death of Krzyshtov Kiyeslovsky
25 years ago today, Polish film master Krzysztov Kiyeslovski died of heart failure in Warsaw, Poland. As early as 1966, he directed his first short film "Tram", until the advent of his last film "Red" in 1994, in the not long 54 years of Kieslowski's life, he created a series of classic works such as "Blue, White and Red", "Two Flowers", "Ten Commandments", "Killing Short Film" and so on, and won many heavyweight awards such as the Golden Lion Award at the 50th Venice International Film Festival, the Jury Award at the 41st Cannes International Film Festival, the Best Director Award at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival, and many other heavyweight awards. Through his works, the audience can not only feel the long poetry, but also realize the most delicate and mysterious emotions in human nature.
Including "Blue", "White", "Red", "Two Flowers", etc., Kieslowski's works have twice been screened during the Shanghai International Film Festival. In 2011, the 14th Shanghai International Film Festival included six of his works in the "Tribute to the Master" section. In 2016, the Ten Commandments, which had a total length of more than 500 minutes, were screened separately. At that time, Kieslowski's partner and good friend, the internationally renowned screenwriter Piersevics also came to the Shanghai International Film Festival to have face-to-face exchanges with fans on the characteristics of Kiersky's works.
This issue of "Time Image Chronicle" invites Wang Peilei (pen name: Lonely Island Lord) who is a director of the Shanghai Film Critics Association, a doctor of film studies, and a well-known film critic, to talk about Kieslowski in his eyes.
Krzyshtov Kieslowski
"Love Short": Kieslowski's double assumption
Text/Lonely Island Lord
Among the film masters who died in the 1990s, Kieslowski belonged to the relatively approachable category. His works have few tortuous and obscure representations, often wrapped in a clear narrative structure in poetry, and are often associated with the act of "watching" itself.
Early in his career after graduating from the Lodz Film School, Kieslowski directed a series of documentaries that focused on the lives of small townspeople and did not shy away from the direct participation and response of people from all walks of life to the social changes in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. His feature film works, through the construction of an independent visual system, enable the audience to experience the connection between legend and reality from their own viewing eyes.
Stills from "Song of Opportunity"
These choices to face reality shape Kieslowski's creative character. As a "post-40s generation", he experienced Poland during the Cold War in its entirety. In his works, Kieslowski draws the audience's attention to the motherland, while at the same time reflecting on his own fate and desires in the great era.
In this context, looking back at Kieslowski's "Love Short Film" in 1988, it is very obvious that his "attention" appeal can be perceived. "Love Short" is adapted and expanded from an episode of The Ten Commandments, a representative work by Kiech himself. In the film, Mark, a boy who lives in a friend's house, peeks at Magda, a tired woman in the opposite building at night with a telescope, and he directly links this peeping to "love" and finally confesses to the other party, and attempts suicide after being rejected. At this time, the power relations carried by the peeping changed, and Magda, in turn, spied on Mark and began to fall in love with him.
From mark's "peeping" until the end of the whole movie, Magda re-established her sad scene through the action of "peeping" mark, and the main line of action thus formed a closed loop between the beginning and the end.
In the simple story line, the subtle advances and retreats of "peeping" become the scenes that the film focuses on. For example, when Mark calls the other party, he does not know how to be good, and is held back by the other party's questioning; when faced with Magda's intimacy with others, he puts down the telescope and gives up peeping; when the man visiting the building discovers Mark's presence, he simply walks out of the apartment building to face the other party directly...
These scenes do not exist simply to create conflict in the story, and in fact, Kieslowski does not seem to be very willing to let these conflicts become the main theme of his films. In 1991's Two Flowers and later the "Color Trilogy," Kiech even eliminated this external tension in a more extreme way.
Return to Love Shorts. The male and female protagonists revolve around the initiative of "seeing and being seen", in fact, there is still a relatively obvious filling field. Even on their first date, Magda was straightforward about what Mark thought was "love." The tension generated in the dialogue does not come from the characters' emotions themselves, but from the audience who concentrates on watching the "peeping" process.
In "Love Short Film", there is actually a double assumption similar to "play within a play". The first comes from the "competition for seeing" between the male and female protagonists, and the second is the audience who coldly examines the whole process. The film's color spectrum often shows red that breaks through the white night, in the corridor windows of Magda's residence, on the sheets in her room and on the paintings she creates... These all ended up being the blood of Mark's wrists. Compared with Several other works by Kiech that directly complete the expression with color, "Love Short Film" obviously places color in the position of "intermediary", trying to make the audience independently judge the existence value of this innocent love by perceiving the changes and invariances in the image.
There is no exact answer in Kie's work. This is one of the characteristics of European cinema that exploded through the complex context of the post-war period. Kieslowski succeeded in extending what he was about to say until the end of the Cold War. According to the director's own words, he often replaces life experience that does not belong to him into material that can be said to be exported, and completes his life narrative. This is also true in the film, even without considering the specific environmental factors of the film's era, in terms of the desire to present "Love Short", the attitude of the characters in the film (the landlady and the old lady) and the characters who do not appear (the landlord's son) or glimpse in front of the camera (the man who returns to the apartment) have a sharp display of Mark's "watching" and the consequences. Just like the large white bottle of milk that Mark sends to Magda every day, it is wrapped in the process of continuous visual power transformation, and eventually becomes the ideal country totem that the protagonist can't ask for and yearns for more and more.
Of course, the most interesting thing about the film is not the process of transformation, but the fact that the so-called "love" subject and object will one day change hands and tune each other. Through "Love Short Film", the audience can glimpse the advantages and disadvantages of people in a time and place in the "adventure of love", and also see the fact that the "lovers" who have some age differences, although their understanding of "love" is different, they still end up on the same path. That is to say, even if they do not talk about "love", they can still be together forever in a certain time and space. Kieslowski's efforts to blur parallel worlds and realities have thus become a fact. This is especially evident when re-watching "Two Flowers".
Stills from "Two Flowers"
If Kieslowski's works show the audience the strong emotions hidden in the depths of the characters' hearts, then the films of japanese film master Akira Kurosawa shock the human heart through profound philosophical themes and unique audiovisual language. That's right, in the next issue of "Time Image History", we will talk to you about the Japanese film master Akira Kurosawa and his related works.