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Waiting for Parousia: Angst on Film from a Brilliant Young Pole
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14578 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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5 / 1988 |
2,912 Words |
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Krzysztof Klopotowski
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The films of Piotr Szulkin are among the most important in the Polish film industry today. Born in 1950, Szulkin is the latest in a line of highly talented filmmakers Poland has produced (Polanski and Wajda representing earlier generations). Szulkin's films deal with the struggle inherent in the bankrupt communist ideology, the use of friends by a communist government, and the difficulties of working under the eye of the state. Although his films engage in a passionate polemic over religion in a mostly Catholic country, the author has avoided ostracism. How has this been possible?
Marxist doctrine was formulated in words. Censorship in the communist state is concerned primarily with keeping words uttered publicly uttered in line with the words of the doctrine. Films, however, are less strictly monitored than some other forms of communication because their images do not directly threaten the written word of the doctrine.
Images in a film can be ambiguous. The censor may not catch certain meanings; the author might repudiate other meanings in direct negotiations with authorities about approving the film for release. The same holds true for the script. The communist censor is obsessively concerned that so-called "negative occurrences" not be generalized. Individual occurrences of "evil" can be permitted and criticized as deviations from a supposedly good system, but the censor will not authorize any work that may actually threaten the system. These principles give film directors greater freedom of expression than writers have. Films can use ambiguous images and employ specific narrative lines, which, though often admittedly tragic, do not "generalize evil."
Ambiguous Area
Thanks to this ambiguous area of freedom between word and image, films made in communist Poland have become more critical of society than any other mass art form. The advent of lightweight sound cameras that can be used in natural interiors has also helped. Official propaganda speaks of the creation of a "new life"; the filmmaker shows exactly how this life looks. Accurate observation of daily reality, with the help of documentary film technology, allows a director to speak the truth. Some films have shown not simply great social events, but the real material results--the shoddy life of the "working class," who are the alleged "leaders," and the degrading poverty of the intelligentsia as expressed in the degradation of the individual and of culture.
By avoiding generalities, Polish filmmakers are able to crawl under the censor's barrier. Szulkin has, however, foiled the barrier by leaping over it: He has created such an exaggerated image of the prevailing evil that his films appear as unthreatening as fairy tales. Szulkin's first film, the fable Golem (1979), integrated elements from everyday reality with the myth of an artificial man, the homunculus, creating a suggestive vision of the disintegration of humanism in the totalitarian social system. Written with a friend, Szulkin's screenplay tells of an unsuccessful scientific experiment by the authorities to create artificial people after a catastrophic atomic war. But the specimens created have fundamental faults; their kindness, gentleness, and rebelliousness cannot be contained within the permissible parameters of an anthropoid, which is supposed to be a virtual robot obedient to the commands of the
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