Breves encuentros, largas conversaciones
Después de estudiar Física en la universidad de Varsovia y Filosofía en la de Cracovia, Krzysztof Zanussi (Varsovia, 1939) estudió cine en el Instituto Nacional de Arte durante los años cincuenta. El país estaba gobernado entonces por un comunismo proestalinista que no iba a dar paso a un tímido deshielo sino hasta la década siguiente. En 1966 Zanussi obtuvo la diplomatura en la Escuela de cine de Lódz con La muerte de un provincial, un cortometraje premiado en Mannheim, Venecia y Moscú.
Durante los años setenta participó en el movimiento del Kino moralnego kiepokoju ("El cine de la inquietud moral"), junto con Andrzej Wajda (El hombre de mármol, 1977; Sin anestesia, 1978; El hombre de acero, 1981) y Edward Zebrowsk (Salvación, 1972; El hospital de la metamorfosis, 1978)). Zanussi escribió y dirigió Iluminación (1973), Colores de camuflaje (1977) y Espiral (1978).
En 1979 fue nombrado presidente de Tor Films, los estudios estatales de cine en los que, bajo su dirección, se produjeron filmes críticos con el Gobierno y las películas de Agnieszka Holland o Krzysztof Kieslowski,que fueron las que más prestigio internacional reportaron a Polonia. Durante los años ochenta, Zanussi no dejó de dirigir sus propias películas, ni la época de ley marcial ni en los años noventa, cuando la desaparición de los subsidios estatales puso en jaque a la industria cinematográfica polaca.
Zanussi sigue trabajando en la actualidad como presidente de Tor Films, que ha pasado a ser una compañía privada. Es profesor de cine en la Escuela Superior de Cine de Cracovia y en la de Katovize, y colabora con la National Film School de Londres. Reconocido intelectual en su país, interviene con frecuencia en la opinión pública, aunque no ha abandonado la dirección cinematográfica. Las más de 70 películas que ha dirigido (incluyendo filmes documentales y películas para la televisión) han sido galardonadas en numerosas ocasiones en festivales internaciones de todo el mundo.
El texto que reproducimos a continuación fue publicado en la revista moscovita Iskustvo kino, en el número correspondiente a febrero de 1989, y fue posteriormente incluido en el libro editado por Marina Tarkovski Acerca de Andréi Tarkovski (Moscú, 1991; edición española, ver Bibliografía)
Zanussi recuerda los breves pero intensos encuentros con Tarkovski a lo largo de los años ochenta. Cuando Andréi tuvo que trasladarse a París para seguir un tratamiento oncológico, en enero de 1986, ,Zanussi pudo gestionar para él un apartamento en esa ciudad e intervino activamente en la formación de los comités que, en diversos países europeos, allegaban fondos para dar cobertura financiera al tratamiento médico de Tarkovski. Siguió paso a paso la enfermedad de Andréi, a quien pudo visitar pocos días antes de su fallecimiento. Zanussi ha intervenido en numerosos actos organizados en memoria de Andréi Tarkovski.
Short meetings, long conversations
By Krzysztof Zanussi
I had meetings with Tarkovsky over many years, ever since I began to go to Moscow on invitations from the Filmmakers Union of the USSR. I don't know whether Tarkovsky was present at my film showings, but years later he remembered the titles of my films, apparently he had seen them somewhere. But I had known about him earlier, since his first film Ivan's Childhood which revealed for me a director with a brilliant individual style.
Then at some "closed" showings I saw Andrey Rubiov which had not been let out on the screens yet. This time I felt I knew everything about the director. Later I met him in Poland, welcoming him at the Warsaw Airport on behalf of the Polish Filmmakers Union.
These ties consisting of short encounters continued for about ten years, because Tarkovsky did not like festivals, and when he did appear at them, it was like a meteor. A close relationship began much later, when work on Nostalgia took him to Italy. I remember our meetings in Rome. It was a difficult time. Martial law had been introduced in Poland. He wanted to know what was really happening in Warsaw. I recall the words he said touching me deeply then about the drop of Polish blood in his genealogy to which he attributed his rebellious spirit, his inability to behave in diplomatic fashion, reasonably, his ability to give vent to his emotions in the most open and blunt manner, which had earned him many enemies and even more humiliation.
Then there was a common adventure, when we travelled across the United States by car. We had been invited to a film festival which provided its participants with an opportunity to travel together and go sightseeing to a remarkable part of the US between Utah and Colorado. It was there, in Las Vegas where I met Andrei, that the trip began. I was the driver, Tarkovsky and his wife Larisa and critic Olga Surkova were the passengers. The director of the film festival and several more Americans travelled in another car. When we made the first stop -the whole trip took us two days- the Americans came up to us dying of curiosity and wanting to know what we were talking about, because it was extremely lively in our car all the way. We answered that we were talking about life, and this was the truth, but we couldn't explain what exactly we were talking about. Neither were we able to explain many other things.
Thus, when we made another stop in the Valley of Giants where John Ford had shot Stagecoach Andrei and I made a bet in a jocular vein on who would be the first to film this landscape. The Americans came up to us again and asked whether Andrei would comment on the fact that Ford had shot his classic in this particular place. Andrei answered that it was a pity to shoot such a metaphysical landscape in a bad film about money. The Americans took the words extremely close to heart, but he couldn't care less, although he might have said that Stagecoach was an event in American filmmaking, that he appreciated the film or something of the sort. And this would have been true, as was, to some extent, the fact that it really was a western the hero of which was money.
Unfortunately, I won the bet shooting a scene in my next to last film in the Valley of Giants, while Andrei was unable to return to the place.
There was another instance at the festival in Las Vegas when our films Nostalgia and Imperative were shown together. These films have something in common not only in content but also in their fate at festivals: in Cannes in 1984 when Nostalgia was shown I was a member of the ecumenical jury, i.e. a jury of religious, Catholic-Protestant orientation, and argued fiercely with my colleagues that this was the only film worthy of a prize. There were many objections, particularly among advocates of Orthodox views who clamed that the film was too metaphysical and progressive mankind would fail to understand it.
In his turn Tarkovsky was a member of the jury in Venice which awarded my Imperative
where elements of Orthodoxy, very popular in the West, were quite strong. Now both films converged at the festival in America, both were shown to the American public which responded rather strangely to them. I had already seen Nostalgia and was seated next to Andrei at the showing asking questions: about how the final episode in church had been done, how much in it was combination and how much scenography. I wanted to know how he had managed to shoot the episode in the Capitol in Rome. I went on asking him questions until the middle of the film and then, all of a sudden, grew excited and forgot about techniques, which was very rare for me, because there are few films which could seriously excite me, particularly to the point of tears as it happened when Domenico was burning and a madman or the terrible shadow of Domenico acted out the scene of his death.
I borrowed this idea from Andrei when I directed Julius Caesar last year in the theatre. The man who played the part in Tarkovsky's film was my assistant. I gave the role to another actor, the role of a person who anticipates Caesar's death like a shadow falling forward. I told Tarkovsky about it, and we returned to the subject of borrowing in art on many occasions. But he had such a strong sense of his own uniqueness in art that he was never jealous, never resented anyone attempting to elaborate on his ideas.
Once -it was en the same trip through America- we discussed The Sacrifice, which did not exist yet and about which he was only thinking and writing. He wanted to make use of a theme from my Imperative, a scene with the participation of actor Zapasievicz in which a madman, i.e. a person who has realized the metaphysical perspective of the world, and therefore would seem to be a lunatic in the eyes of ordinary people, undergoes a psychiatric and psychological examination. The latter yields no results, which is only natural because even the most competent examination is senseless, it cannot describe the phenomenon it considers since religious experience cannot be explained in psychological terms. Andrei told me that he was planning a very similar scene. He wanted to shoot a scene in which an authoritative psychologist would explain to his hero after the house had been set fire to how tired he was and how many rational factors had come together to produce precisely such a response. The psychiatrist would be seated with his back to the window, and a terrifying dark cloud would be gradually advancing, unseen by the psychiatrist, and the hero, subsequently played by Josephson, would look at him and say: "You simply can't see anything." There is no such scene in the film, it ends much earlier, with the departure of the strange ambulance, the medical orderlies, violence - the end is uncompleted, left open.
I recalled the above also because our talks had a direct bearing not only on the films but also on how American viewers responded to them. There were many meetings with viewers in America, and I played the part of intermediary. It so happened in the course of history that this part was played naturally by Poles, because we understand the Russian soul slightly better than the West does, and at the same time we are slightly closer to the West than Russia. Therefore my role as a bridge was natural and even necessary, because it was not enough to merely interpret. American psychology, particularly the psychology of the residents of a small town in Colorado where outstanding intellectuals and very ordinary yet warm-hearted people mingled, was something Andrei at first could not cope with. The mutual lack of understanding was remarkable! I remember an exchange - I often tell the story, and it has become polished as a result of frequent use. Hearing what Tarkovsky was saying about art, an artist's calling, man's purpose, a young man saw him as a guru (the need for gurus in America is very great) and inquired simple-heartedly: "Mr. Tarkovsky, what must I do to be happy?" This was quite an ordinary question by American standards, but for Andrei it was simply shocking. He interrupted the conversation and asked: "What does the man want? Why does he ask such foolish questions?" I tried to explain to Andrei that he was being too harsh to the boy, that he shouldn't be angry but should advise him. Andrei said: "How can I advise him? Doesn't he know what he's living for?" I said: "Imagine that he really doesn't know what he's living for and tell him something that is obvious to you." But Andrei shrugged his shoulders and said: "Let him ponder over what he has been called from non existence for, wherefore he exists, let him divine the role assigned to him in the cosmos, let him fulfill that role, and as to happiness it might come or not come." It was all quite clear to me, but it took the young man maybe ten minutes to recover from the shock, because the words he heard from Andrei were totally incomprehensible to him. It was difficult for him to understand, for example, the basic fact that existence in general could be a problem, i.e. that it did not go without saying, that a person should ponder over the meaning of his existence, that existence imposed an obligation on a person - for the pragmatic American mind these things were incomprehensible.
This "soul-rending" discussion went on until evening, and then I had a talk with Andrei, and I tried to explain to him that the American word happiness and the Russian schastye were only put side by side in a dictionary and actually meant quite different things. For instance, an airline in Europe founded by Onassis with flights to America runs an advertisement addressed lo those who are "happy". But that does not mean that each passenger of the company is happy, otherwise it would have to refuse to serve widows and orphans: to be happy is to be seated in a convenient seat drinking coffee or tea, not feeling too cold or too hot. In other words, happiness is elementary comfort and nothing more. And to say that happiness was something else to a person brought up with this belief, that happiness should not be sought, that it would either come or not come, that it would be given, and finally that a person should be engaged in something more important than the search for his own happiness - this sounded extremely exotic to the American.
I gladly recall the story, because these were joyful and amusing meetings. Then came the time of sad meetings. I saw Andrei several times in Rome, watching him getting accustomed to living in Italy, how, like many other Russians, he came to love this country with time. He grew attached to the country as he could never have become attached to France, despite the fact that he was revered, loved and respected in France. Cartesian rationalism was always distressing for him, and he rebelled against it, rebelled against the thorny role of reason, if it is possible to say so, against its presence in each gesture, act, and thought, against its merciless shrewdness. It was alien to him, it was an obstacle for him and provoked a reflex of hostility. In Italy, in the climate of intuition and human warmth marking Italian culture, he felt much better. I met many of his friends here, they understood him much better than the French or, say, the Swedes. It would seem that due to its northern location Scandinavia should have much in common with Russia, yet it was very distant from him because of its Protestant puritanism, a completely different type of intuition, another understanding of life and the world than the one he carried within himself.
Our last meetings were, in effect, one long, occasionally interrupted but single conversation. I remember when he decided to remain in the West, we spoke a lot about his future life, that it was a completely different world with its laws, that there would no longer be a paternalistic state, that he would have to take care of his own fate and be responsible for it. That, in particular, he should think about insurance and similar practical things. We talked and I saw that for Andrei these things were absolutely impossible, incomprehensible.
A year had not passed when Larisa called Warsaw and said that doctors had found cancer in Andrei and was possible to take out a life insurance under the circumstances. Of course it was too late, and there was no question of an insurance. But in the end I realized that Andrei had been right: so many people rushed to help him that there was no need for an insurance: the same effect was achieved by means of human compassion, generosity and the sincere desire to help. At first Andrei lived in my flat in Paris, then he was transferred to a hospital. I met him a couple of times in Paris when he left the hospital for short whiles and there were short moments of joy. Then I went to visit them in Italy on the seashore where they had rented a villa. It seemed as if Andrei were better. He had put on weight, only some one hundred -one hundred fifty grams, but joy and hope returned. We met the very last time in December, nearly two weeks before his death, once again in Paris. He had undergone drug treatment and was appallingly thin and emaciated, but he continued to speak of the future, of what he would film. And when I listened to him it seemed to me that indeed a moment had come when it was unknown whether the treatment would kill him or he would overcome the illness.
He described the films he had failed to make, the Hoffmaniana. It was his old screenplay. Most of all he spoke about the picture focused on the figure of St Antony of Padova. And it seemed to me that the specific historical saint did not concern him particularly, he was much more interested in the notion of sanctity, the tragedy of a conflict between flesh and spirit in man. He said a word which struck me, the word "sinner" in respect to himself. Hardly anyone uses the word today, especially of one's own free will, and he related the word to himself, admitting the imperfection of his actions, and there was something eschatological about it. Nevertheless, I felt a deep hope that he would come through, because he said the word "sinner" an instant after both of us had agreed that modern man's most terrible sin was vanity, a feeling of conceit arising from the illusion that he was independent, a master of his fate, and nothing threatened him. And only illness enabled him to see the fragile nature of our undertakings, our decisions, our conflicts, and our policies which from this vantage point lost their meaning. And from this vantage point Andrei retreated into himself, was far from the world and from us. But this only seemed so, because our conversation would be interrupted and we would go out of the ward when he grew weak, and then he called us again to be together for a little bit more to continue the conversation - he heard what we were saying without him, and even then it was possible, and we wanted to hope that he would give us and the world much more.
Although he left such a great and monumental collection of films behind that, in some sense, it is possible to say that he had fully expressed himself, done everything he had been destined to do, at times I ponder over what else he might have done. ?
© Del original, Krzysztof Zanussi