Word: kieslowski
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...other behemoths clogging your local 'plex. But every once in a while a unique film work appears on one screen as a lonely reminder of what cinema can summon in intelligence, scope and power. That would be Decalogue, the 10-part cycle of short films that Krzysztof Kieslowski made for Polish TV in 1988-89. Long withheld from U.S. distribution, the series will be shown this week at Manhattan's Walter Reade Theater. A cinephile's fondest hope is that the series will soon travel to other venues or be released on videocassette. And not a moment too soon...
...Kieslowski, who died two years ago at 54 after heart-bypass surgery, was perhaps Europe's most revered director. Several of his pictures--The Double Life of Veronique, Blue and Red--were swank fables of anomie in which seductive color schemes enveloped gorgeous actresses like a Chanel shroud. The films nearly turned despair into a fashion statement...
That proves only that Kieslowski was also an entertainer. The ambiguity and poignancy of each sketch show that he was always an artist. In Decalogue, One (Thou Shalt Have No Other God but Me), a math professor lives with his bright, loving 11-year-old son--a small boy who asks big questions about God and death. The father believes that everything can be measured, even the density of ice on the local pond. It will take a catastrophe to teach him that his logic has holes. But the episode's true poetry is in scenes...
...What if? trick. It has inspired such evocative works as Alan Ayckbourn's play Intimate Exchanges (a woman has, or doesn't have, a cigarette, and her choice leads to 16 variations) and Krzysztof Kieslowski's film Blind Chance (a man runs for a train and heads into three different realities). In writer-director Peter Howitt's version, the Helen who makes the train home finds her beau Gerry (John Lynch) in bed with his old girlfriend (Jeanne Tripplehorn); the Helen who misses the train gets mugged. And in both cases she meets a seemingly nice fellow, James (John Hannah...
...that the same Catherine that Henry James had in mind? Holland, a writer in her own right--an Oscar nominee for writing Europa, Europa, she also authored the screenplay that became Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue--is sensitive to the special demands of adapting existing material to the screen...