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The Splendour of Catharsis (On Kazimierz Kutz’S Film Śmierć Jak Kromka Chleba (Death Like a Slice of Bread))1

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The Splendour of Catharsis (On Kazimierz Kutz’S Film Śmierć Jak Kromka Chleba (Death Like a Slice of Bread))1 286 Notes and Reviews Rev. Jerzy SZYMIK THE SPLENDOUR OF CATHARSIS (ON KAZIMIERZ KUTZ’S FILM ŚMIERĆ JAK KROMKA CHLEBA (DEATH LIKE A SLICE OF BREAD))1 "There may come a time in which a lot of peo­ Kutz is from Szopienice, from smoking ple will feel a need to look closer at the recent, cinder tips, from familoki (red and grey saints who have given their lives for Poland. I think this will happen sooner than we all sup- houses made of brick and in the past pose.” inhabited mainly by miners). Kazimierz Kutz I do not intend to impress you here with a cheap and in fact false "Kazimierz Kutzs film makes us aware that we mythologization of tradition. The latter is have gone far away from the Poland which has recently been. It is awful to think that this is the such as it was and is, i.e., grey, human, same country, the same people, and yet today's a mixture of heroism and weakness, * reality is different. [...] The film paralyses with beauty and ugliness, virtues and vices. its truth. It shows what we were, and brings to Nevertheless, without a creative memory mind how much we have lost of the gravity and dignity with which we struggled for freedom. of tradition, man would be like a plant After victory everything has sunk into oblivion. without roots; dry and able neither to Kutz's film plucks us out of our forgetfulness of make, nor watch, nor experience the film that atmosphere.” about which I am going to speak. Krzysztof Zanussi Obviously, I do not claim (God for- bid!) that Podole, Kuyavia, Piedmont or At the outset allow me to make a very Bavaria are anything worse than Silesia. personal and, I think, important, remark Absolutely not. Yet, neither are they - I am Silesian. Kazimierz Kutz is something better. No fear! I am not Silesian, too. Strictly speaking then, our against patriotism within the parameters “I” is not of Mickiewicz's Dziady , nor, of Europę (on condition that it does not the more so, of “Disneyland.” I am of grow into nationalism, that is), nor am hard working ancestors from the fields of I against the idea of being European, Wodzisław-Rybnik, of their work in the (again, if this does not grow into dim abysses of Silesian and Westphalian “McDonaldism”). Quite the contrary, coal mines, of their prayer before the I think that Polish and European charac- miraculous icon of the Smiling Lady of ters are possible only then when they Pszów - the patroness of my home par- grow out of a love of one’s own village, ish, of their faithfulness to God and land. district, parish, regions; of a love for one's landscape, cut short by the line of horizon, of the tie with one's “little 1 Death like a Slice of Bread. Polish pro- homeland.” With the stipulation again duction. Year of production: 1994. Screenplay that it is a true love, devoid of nar- and direction by Kazimierz Kutz. Musie by W. Kilar. Director of photography W. Zdort. row-mindedness, xenophobia and rapacity. Starring: T. Budzisz-Krzyżanowska, J. Gajos, Such love expands the capacity of the J. Radziwiłłowicz, and J. Trela. heart and widens one's vision. It helps to Notes i and Reviews 287 love and respect that which belongs to defend the most important values. Nine one's neighbours, which is different. of them: Józef Czekalski, Józef, Giza, All Kutz's works - not only his recent Joachim Gnida, Ryszard Gzik, Bogusław film - promote this view. His “film” love Kopczak, Andrzej Pełka, Jan Stawisiński, of people is most often expressed by way Zbigniew Wilk and Zenon Zając, paid the of images about our common “little highest price for this defence. homeland.” Let us recall the titles of the The screenplay was based on oral and trilogy of the sixties and seventies: Sól written reports, diaries, materials gathered ziemi czarnej (The Salt of the Black by authors who had written books about Land), Perła w koronie (Jewel in the the crushing of the strike, and on talks Crown), Paciorki jednego różańca (The with witnesses of those events. We have Beads of One Rosary). This director has therefore a cinematic reconstruction of always been able to show - as hardly the events which took place in the period anyone else has - individual heroes in from 13-16 December 1981 at the “Wu­ various interrelationships with the envi- jek” coal mine in Katowice. It was ronment, which in tura moulded them. filmed at the exact site of the tragedy. Most often it was the folk culture of Up- The film assembled the leading Polish per Silesia, penetrated by their own par­ actors (including Teresa Budzisz-Krzyża- ticular spirit, a spirit whose foundations nowska, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Radziwiło­ rested on religious piety, diligence, fidel- wicz, Jerzy Trela), but it is not the fig- ity, and simplicity. ures they played who were the heroes of I was stunned when 1 saw Kutz in Death Like a Slice of Bread. Wiesław a television programme (Kariery, barie­ Zdort, the director of photography states: ry), face-to-face with the Warsaw social “The actors play authentic and real peo­ ćlite. There we had a director who had ple who are alive, who lived through all invited his friends to the studio, a folk that. Thus there is a priest, members of group from Ruda Śląska which tremen- the mine's «Solidarity,» yet these people dously embarrassed the capitaTs high so­ are like islands in a rough sea who ciety. The boys from familoki sang in emerge for a moment from the pressing their incomprehensible idiom (subtitles crowd, and then disappear.” The main appeared on the screen) and about incom­ hero of the film is the multitude of peo­ prehensible matters. An important ques- ple, and speaking even more precisely, tion loomed large in the studio: is it a human fellowship dramatically gathered snobbery to show off fellowship with the around values. “common man”? Can there be anything “With his film about «Wujek,» Kazi­ in common between film culture of the mierz Kutz has achieved the extraordi- highest standard and the ballad I am rid- nary, something in whose accomplishment ing my motorbike, in which we find the almost nobody believed. He brought us sentence: “my pants are fastened by back to the experience of martial law in a safety pin”? its pure form” - wrote Tadeusz Sobolew­ There is much in common, I would ski. Exactly. The film is crystal-clear in say. its picture, ascetic, “true” in the sense in which a work of art may, and should, * render the truth. Martial law, the years Put briefly, the film is an epic about peo­ 1981-89... For quite a long time, the tra- ple who took a firm stance against evil to dition of those days and the people eon- 288 Notes and Reviews nected to them have been continually effect, at some purifying transformation. viewed with suspicion: there appear deri- Perhaps it is here that its main value lies. sive comments, people mock at “veter- As viewers we are confronted with ans,” “ethos makers,” the audiences that which occurs during the strike, with throng cinemas and have great fun watch- gestures and words, of people about ing a solidarity underground activist pos- whom we know little. We must either get ing as an security officer. to know their religious and cultural back­ It is in this sense and against this ground, or imagine it. The film lacks the background that Kutz is very brave. He is background of domestic, Silesian ritual not afraid of supercilious smiles, charges which Kutz recreated with care in the of backwardness, yarious kinds of pres- former “Silesian” films. Only the way in sure from leftist political trends, of stand- which miners turn to each other remains. ing counter to fashionable nihilism, and Everything is devoid of euphoria and of noise made by the advocates of the extraordinariness. We merely observe former Polish People's Republic. Kutz is a chain of effects caused by of something brave in yet another sense. He stages which is beyond words, beyond the a scene in which the striking miners screen. gather around a cross. Before the viewer’s “It just can't be like that” - says one eyes there is a passion play with its of the miners when they learned that the piercing realism and suggested analogy. Militia (former police) had arrested their Yes, we are at the Golgotha, along with legally elected leader. This short sentence ZOMO officers (Riot-Squads of the Peo- is a wonderful expression of that which ple's Militia), and the emperor's soldiers we, in a scholarly manner cali “to reveal who take part in the Mystery of the Al- morał obligation.” “Man has a duty to­ tar. It is enacted on their behalf as well. wards himself of which nobody can re- Let us quote Sobolewski once again: lieve him, the factors of extemal violence “Such is the sense today of the film notwithstanding” - the priest explains at about martial law.” the Eucharist celebrated during the strike. Everything is depicted in a monumen- * tal fashion, from a dis tance, as it were, with Wojciech Kilar's elegiac musie in Many viewers setting off for the cinema the background, musie which combines were filled with apprehension. What church chorale with Silesian melody. would it be like? It seems that the time Throughout, there is an interplay of many for this film, made twelve years after unobtrusive symbols. Perhaps the most those events, is not the best - perhaps is profound of these and the one which even the worst.
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