The jubilee shadow of an unforgettable ancestor. Cinema by Andrzej Wajda – Polish Film Festival

Nearly every film by Wajda is a political work. And it’s neither afraid nor ashamed of it. However, it’s not about associations with political parties - Wajda’s films have almost never raised that issue. The political aspect of this director’s cinematography serves as a noble enrichment to the film itself. It’s to be an additional layer to the plot, ensuring that during discussions about this work beside “about what?” questions we also answer “for what?”. More’s the pity that in present discourse “political film” term has been completely discredited - as a one limiting money-making abilities and audience restricting.

It’s no wonder that amidst more and more negative connotations, where every outright articulated opinion or even an innovative idea meets with an online revanchism and is instantly rejected (I recommend imagining how dreadful headlines and comments would sound if Teresa Budzisz-Krzyżanowska would be cast as Hamlet), we can feel even more nostalgic about Wajda’s cinema full of declarations.

Interestingly, this reaction is opposite to the decadent period of cinema of moral anxiety when in a landscape full of Wajda’s passionate X and TOR, individual, abstract pieces have disappeared.

Although a diptich made out from Man of Marble and Man of Iron stands out the most from declarative cinema films (with Walesa: Man of Hope being a confirmation that after 1989 something has stopped working), one should not forget about less obvious examples.

Take for example Without Anesthesia, with Zbigniew Zapasiewicz’s remarkable role (during the period of cinema of moral anxiety he played ideologically ambivalent characters), playing the role of a respected journalist, who begins to lose everything overnight. Focused on an individual losing everything careerwise and privately, Wajda records the whole picture of the system. However, unlike the iconic diptych, he doesn’t explain everything directly. He remains a fierce critic of reality, showing a more nuanced side of his film journalism.

A different example of how political Wajda could be, even when this was not the main point of a film, is The Conductor - another unjustly avoided film by this director. In the foreground we have a confrontation of morality, complexes, especially those of a local conductor Adam Pietryk (played by Andrzej Seweryn, awarded in Berlin) who feels worse than a newcomer, foreign Maestro John Lasocki, and a tragic story of jealousy. Simultaneously, the director is aware of putting everything in the reality of the Polish People’s Republic. That's why a scene with Janusz Gajos as a party dignitary is so crucial. It was the party who led the culture policy, managed the mechanism of who can be a conductor and who can play in an orchestra - musicians from towns and smaller cities (as planned) or a more distinguished group. Or perhaps a concert, local by definition, should take place in a capital instead, mainly to ensure an undisturbed course of the event? All of this, even if it’s just an episode, constructs a sense of truthfulness of the setting.

I feel like this is the main lesson given by Wajda that modern Polish cinema didn’t listen to - the ability to sneak in the plot evidence that a story is rooted in reality. Obviously, it’s not only about the aspect of authority. It takes one look at fictional society’s assets to try to answer a question, in how many domestic pictures have we learned about characters’ incomes, proprietorship, what influences their life in the moment we meet them. Watching Wajda's films, we are aware of class affiliation and the burden connected to it, and the fact of work (and the prospect of losing it) has its implications.

Artistic curiosity

Wajda’s cinema had one more, distinctive trait, the lack of which is still noted in Polish cinema (and which was lacking in the director’s work at the end). It was a cinema full of eclecticism -  following projects were surprising and reading of Notesy (Wajda’s notes written between 1942 and 2016 compiled by Tadeusz Lubelski and Agnieszka Morstin) shows how the director developed reading- and audience-wise. Two examples: “18.02.1985 Hail Mary by J.-L.Godard. Too much beauty in this film! Today, Godard’s language is so passive (unlike previously) that it totally eliminates outrage or protest towards such treatment of this matter. The thing became fully indifferent so the film itself is now meaningless.” 13.08.1986 “(...) Cinema - Back to the Future. Having watched this film I come back to Inwazja z Aldebarana. If (naturally) Polish reality, attacked by people from Aldebaran, was told in such a way…” .

This curiosity mixed with openness to schools and tendencies led to constant refreshening of his own style. Andrzej Wajda wasn’t an author of one, distinct poetics with a known working pattern. By watching The Sewer or Ashes and Diamonds, from Polish Film School period and something from Cinema of moral anxiety period, one can notice how much they differ from each other, just to later realise that it’s not even a decade from  half a century of the director’s work.

Searching for a voice and also catching Zeitgeist observed by means of different art pieces led to experiments. Innocent Sorcerers remains my favourite - a youthful trial of Wajda and Jerzy Andrzejewski, supported by a young poet Jerzy Skolimowski, then unrelated to cinematography.

The director himself, and that’s proved by Notesy, didn’t like Innocent Sorcerers very much but for me it’s a formative film. Light, volatile, well-written, full of lure and character charm worthy of the new wave. Everything for Sale is also very new-wave like, and previously mentioned The Conductor remained indebted in Ingmar Bergman’s cinema. Not all attempts were successful at that point but looking at this work, one cannot get hold of an impression of how much Wajda was on his toes trying to stay afloat in this cinematic circulation.

Of course, Wajda’s eclecticism was also made possible by financial opportunities - but it is also proof that the principle of not changing something as long as it works holds up much less well in art than in other areas of life. When observing and appreciating contemporary Polish cinema, a pattern is all too often repeated in which a successful debut marked by a distinctive voice and style ends up, sooner or later, slowly drifting toward mainstream cinema - toward the realm of artistic safety. Wajda long tried to avoid this sphere, constantly seeking a new image, a new voice. He often drew on literary works, from Władysław Reymont to

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz.

Filing the void

Andrzej Wajda’s jubilee differs from his previous anniversaries. When we celebrated Andrzej Munk’s jubilee, we were troubled by all films that weren’t made because of Munk’s untimely, tragic death. When we celebrated Wojciech Jerzy Has’s 100^th birthday anniversary, we were fascinated by his distinct voice, inimitable style and panache.

Wajda’s centenary apart from celebrations, makes his absence in today’s Polish cinema more visible. A void left not by films he never made or one-of-a-kind poetics but by the greatness of his name and issues he raised in his work. By responsibility for art, cultural policy (although in that regard the future looks bright thanks to the Youth of Polish Filmmakers Association), for the country and idea.

Watching Everything for Sale can give you a new hope. It’s a film about how to make something special out of someone’s passing. How to give a new, artistic life to death. How, thanks to the magic of cinema, create an avant-garde piece of work rooted in a real tragedy. Perhaps this will serve as an incentive to fill the void over which the shadow cast by the director’s figure, looming over Polish cinema, is most clearly visible.

We don’t need another Andrzej Wajda. He was, after all, one of a kind. What we really need is his curiosity and fascination with the world surrounding him, for us to focus on what he has left and not on feeling his absence during the next jubilee. 

Maciej Kędziora - historian of Polish cinema, PhD student at University of Silesia. He researches domestic cinematography as an element of cultural policy, its political history and reality of state patronage functioning. Regular collaborator of Ekrany magazine and Second Polish Radio programme, also writes for Filmweb and Kino monthly magazine. 3rd place and honour laureate in Krzysztof Mętrak competition.