THE THERAPISTS THAT SHAKE THE MOVIES
Marcel Łoziński keeps saying that reality is like an aquarium: you need to give it a shake to find out what is there at the bottom. He used a similar technique in his latest documentary How to Do It? (Jak to się robi?) and, as a result, all we could see was slime and murky water. The backstages of Polish politics are not a mystery to anyone, but when you go inside and eyewitness how the production process of a political product proceeds – all the marketing works of a human material – it is just like when you are taken inside the fires of “Hell’s Kitchen” while watching the popular UK TV series as the result may be quite the same: it simply makes your appetite gone. And the reason is the knowing of how synthetic the end product is. The naturalness quotient of this product – and by naturalness I mean honesty, certain frankness, own genuine ideas – matches the quantity of such in a powdered soup. The boy who later in the film turns into the main character seems real and genuine only in the casting scene: asked about what associations he has with the word ‘politics’, he lists money, popularity and power. It would be naïve, too, to believe that these objectives are never on the lists of most politics, but the key difference is none of them would ever admit that. Instead of saying so, their real goals are covered up by appropriately-sounding slogans such as service to society, concern about homeland’s welfare, etc. The film character, the one who stuck it out as the only person of the group selected by Piotr Tymochowicz, is a product perfect: he will say just anything we want to hear, or what the leader of the party he is currently working for would expect to be said to him. And as for the selection of a party to work for, he can be top flexible here and, regardless of his choice, – equally convincing. He would always know when to pause tellingly, suspend his voice or how to make the right gestures with his hands. For an average man, a potential electorate, political views political candidates present constitute only a subsidiary issue. The director himself had a chance to discover how the above statement is true. It was in 1990 when he, as a member of the electoral committee of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, believed in the unquestionable virtues and advantages of the candidate he was working for. But the electorates seemed to prefer and buy a “man from nowhere”, someone with an exotic wife by one side and a black briefcase by the other. In his documentary, Łoziński reveals the secret of how to make a Tymiński from scratch by means of socio-technological publicity stunts. At the same time, he is discrediting a part of the Polish political scene. Darek Arest, the reviewer of How to Do It? in the December issue of the “Film” movie magazine, was right when he said that in a few years time – when the film is no longer new and fresh – it will turn out that best political films are always apolitical. The director himself emphasizes the universal quality of his film, summarizing it as a story about temptation. The students of Tymochowicz, or most of them and though to a varying degree – give in to the compulsion. It is worrisome that what they seem unable to bear is a mere thought of joining the youth splinter group of the Samoobrona party [and we are left with no doubts as for the sad fact that they are (de)motivated by rather esthetic than ethic reasons], whereas they show no signs of remorse after deceiving a poor Iraqi who was taking part in the antiwar protest they themselves had organized. The picket occurred to be just a test to see whether and how they were able to control a gathered group of people and provoke the event. But aside from rednecks and crudes of the “mentality of a moron” (over a 100 years ago, Le Bon touched on the issue, though he was a bit more gentle about the selection of the word here), there was in the picketing crowd a man holding an Iraqi flag – a man who believed that the guys with megaphones were there to put their foot down against the bombardments of the houses of innocent people. His tears were real contrary to the pacifist slogans chanted impressively by the course participants.
Łoziński represents a group of ‘directors-therapists’. He may favor a shock therapy treatment, but then again – who said that the job of an artist is to color up the world and feed audience pretty pictures that are false. And this can be applied also to the events of the more or less recent past. The latest film by Ken Loach – the awarded a Cannes’ Golden Palm The Wind That Shakes the Barley – is a story about a fight for freedom of the Irish people after the ending of WWI. About a break-free-spurt that turned into a fratricidal fight. The Polish premiere was just about to be screened while in England – as Elżbieta Ciapara (“the one that shakes history”) reports – the director (known as the man whose heart is always on the left side) was accused of falsifying history, being grossly unilateral and anti-British. Loach fends off the allegations of having intended a propaganda film. He quotes historical sources supporting the fact the British army occupying Ireland took the liberty of committing dishonorable misdemeanor. Well, examples of such acts can be found wherever occupation takes place as similar incidents are allowed for in Iraq (Loach was against the Western intervention in the region and criticized the decision about the British participation in the conflict). The director, a native Englishman, goes by the maxim saying that history is a teacher of life, but before you let it teach you anything, you need to get to know it well. He recalls his school years when no one spoke of the shady incidents from nearly 200 years back – the dark pages in the history of the British empire. And it is always a deliberate action: people would not have been so easily talked into the war in Iraq as something of highest necessity and a rightful cause if only they had known the truth.
It is difficult not to agree with Loach about that honesty in talking about the past – the authentic evaluation of what happened – can teach you telling the truth about the present The question is, do we always want to know it and – in particular – see it? Łoziński reveals the truth, disillusions the audience (at least me) completely about the Polish politics and calls for increased vigilance while ever witnessing pickets. Agnieszka Holland is another film director who criticizes the deceitful world of politics and hypocrisy of the government. She talks to Anita Zuchora (Fine music, honorable politicians – Piękna muzyka, szlachetni politycy) and shares her idea of a therapy she would like to treat audience. She means a TV series Ekipa (The Crew) modeled on the American series The West Wing. The Crew is a family project prepared by herself, her daughter Kasia Adamik and her sister Magdalena Łazarkiewicz. As Holland says, it is going to be fiction fed on true stories, which means that the characters are made of pictures directly provided by figures who do or did exist, but their identities will not follow straight from the portraits. Even more so as the main character is going to be a young and smart Prime Minister, who takes his office unexpectedly to himself and as if by chance, but being an honest and responsible man that he is, he decides to face the challenge. Although the world of politics presented in the series will be given a bit of retouching, it will remain realistic. Similarly, the characters – as representatives of various political views – will be credible and human so that the audience could refer to them. And what is the objective of the therapy? The aim is to show that a politician is not a disguise name for a mobster or cynical careerist, and that to govern is not a piece-of-cake-job. Also, to show that it really is possible for Poland to be a normal, democratic country. The director has her feet firmly on the ground even if the above statements may sound idealistic. And even if they follow from her sense of mission and civil duty, it is a pity that the opinion of the public television is different. As a result, the public television is not going to support the project as a co-producer of the series. Still, The Crew will be shot and it would be good if the side effect of its broadcasting was, for example, an increased turnout. All in all, this aquarium is ours and there is no one to do the job of changing he water for us.
Katarzyna Wajda
Translated by Dominika Szkoda
Discussed journals: Film