AN INTERVIEW WITH KRZYSZTOF PIESIEWICZ
Screenwriter for The Decalogue
There's a little known link between a Polish masterpiece and Heaven,
the new multi-national production about an Italian cop who falls in love
with a guilt-ridden British teacher/turned bomber.
Film buffs familiar with The Decalogue,
the great Polish updated version of the Ten Commandments, know the name
of its director Krzysztof Kieslowski, but few realize it was conceived
by Krzysztof Piesiewicz, an attorney who was the originator, co-writer
and close collaborator on the director's last 17 productions. As a lawyer,
he had spent five years defending Solidarity dissidents and his intimate
knowledge of police interrogations and the manifold manipulations in judicial
systems is an integral aspect of "Heaven." The two Krzysztofs who worked
together on Red, White
and Blue (liberty, equality,
fraternity ) had planned another trilogy but Kieslowski died of a heart
attack at 54 before they finished the script for Heaven.
His partner completed it and went on to write Hell and Purgatory.
Kieslowski never planned to direct the new trilogy, Piesiewicz said through
an interpretor, at the Karlovy Vary international festival last July.
Tom Tykwer, the German director
of Run Lola Run eventually became the director. The script
went through mind-boggling linguistic metamorphoses: Polish, French, German,
English and Italian. Cate Blanchett, the Australian actress and Giovanni
Ribisi, an American, star in the film which was shot in Italy.
Although Piesiewicz - who had contractual approval rights - professed
to have been pleased with the film there was a sense of unspoken regret
in his voice. There were undertones of sorrow, love - and humor- when
he recalled his unique association with Kieslowski. "His death was a loss
not just for cinema, but for humanity," he said. At 57, his face looked
as somber as Kieslowski's when he had to endure journalistic questions.
Piesiewicz never wanted to be an attorney. As a student, his passion was
trying to understand the roots of totalitarianism, both Nazism and Communism.
Nevertheless he became prominent when he started practicing criminal and
family law in 1975. Soon, he was greatly influenced by Harvard professor
Lon Fuller's books theorizing that law is not just an instrument to govern,
but has to embody real moral values. "When I realized this, I started
to join the movement against the Communist regime. I began defending people
from the opposition and slowly I became one of them in 1980."
Piesiewicz became acquainted with the director through a client, Hanna
Krall, a Jewish novelist who wrote about her experience of being hidden
as a child during the war by a Polish family. (She would later inspire
Decalogue Eight.) Krall knew that Kieslowski wanted to make
a documentary about how martial law cases were handled in court and she
suggested that the two men meet.
"We intended to talk for half an hour," Piesiewicz said, "but we talked
for hours and hours and continued talking about everything for the next
16 years. I was trying to convince him not to do his film for two reasons.
One, they wouldn't let him in to film the place where important things
are going on. Secondly, you can't see the real drama in a courtroom because
everyone is playing a role. The real drama is spontaneous."
However, when cameras were finally allowed into the courtroom, they both
learned, to their surprise, that the judges - who may have had history
in mind - were afraid to be recorded passing unjust sentences. The presence
of the camera almost invariably helped the defense.
Six months later, Kieslowski asked, ironically, if Piesiewicz wanted to
become an artist. "I didnšt know what it meant to be or not to be an artist.
I just smiled and a short time after we started to write a script (No
End.) How did we get to the point of working together? Now, years later,
I think he decided there was a child-like naīvete in my personality because
I believed I could go with him anywhere, especially a court and convince
Communists that they were not right."
No End was inspired by the death
of a legal colleague. In the film, the ghost of a young lawyer (a kind
of pure conscientious spirit who couldn't really survive under Communism)
observes the world after martial law. Meanwhile, an older attorney, resigned
to compromise, takes over the defense of his client, an opposition activist.
And in the end, the lonely widow walks away to join her dead husband.
It's a scene that has its echo in Heaven.
"We didn't want to make a film about martial law," Piesiewicz said. "We
wanted to show particular people and who they are inside. It was very
strongly attacked by the Communist authorities. It's the only Polish film
that described the atmosphere and drama of that time. The trauma of martial
law extinguished the marvelous fire inside people who were in opposition
to the regime. No End reflects my personal experiences,
not my facts." But it is a fact that in the first two months of martial
law, he lived in different places every day because he was afraid of being
imprisoned in an internment camp for intellectuals.
Now a Polish senator, he looks back on those dangerous years and says,
"Sometimes there is a moment in human life that we touch paradise on earth
and for me that was the first few years of the solidarity movement when
there was no difference between doctors, lawyers and workers." He observed
then how strength of will and heart overcame bullets and tanks, but the
conflicts and suspicions among friends engendered by martial law are still
sometimes reflected in Poland today.
As very young men, Piesiewicz said, "We touched everything. I was defending
bandits and heroes and Kieslowski made fantastic documentaries, but he
came to realize that they had barriers that didn't meet his artistic needs.
You can't intervene with a camera into the intimate world of human beings.
It's barbaric to try to enter, but you can with fiction. And I had similar
problems in my work as a lawyer. I was not so much interested in what
man had done, but why? What happens to a human being? What should we do
with him? Why does a human suddenly become an animal?"
That human question also resonates in The Decalogue which
had been inspired by a 15th century painting which Piesiewicz saw as a
boy. It was titled "Decalogue" and divided into ten parts with particular
themes of those times. Piesiewicz wondered how they would apply to Poland
under martial law. "The churches were full of people and I was curious
how they would decipher the Decalogue. Did they become religious or political?
These were the paradoxes of our times." In the end, the filmmakers decided
that politics would play no part in the human dramas they portrayed.
It also didn't play a part five years ago when they began work on Heaven
and terrorism had not yet become front page news. "The script asks why
a beautiful, young, clever woman would plant a bomb," Piesiewicz said.
"And in the end we love this woman. I know that terrorism is not good.
It's more than not good. It's a dramatic immoral situation in the world.
But why do beautiful young people make this a big problem? It's a big
question, Why?"
-Judy Stone