IT’S TIME TO DIE by Krzysztof Zanussi translated by Anna Piwowarska // Stephen Davies 1 INTRODUCTION The grim title of this book originates from an anecdote and I ask you to treat it as a joke. I don’t intend to die soon or persuade anyone to relocate to the afterworld. But a certain era is dying before our very eyes and if someone is very attached to it, they should take my words to heart. This is what this book is to be about. But first, about that anecdote. It comes from a great actor, Jerzy Leszczynski. For me, a fifty-something-year-old, this surname is still very much alive. I saw Jerzy in a few roles in the ‘Polish Theatre’ just after the war; I also saw him in many pre-war films (after the war I think he only acted in ‘Street Boundary’). He was an actor from those pre-war years: handsome, endowed with a wonderful appearance and a beautiful voice. He played kings, military commanders, warlords and this is how the audiences loved him. After the war, he acted in radio plays – he had beautiful pre-war diction and of course he pronounced the letter ‘ł’ and he didn't swallow his vowels. Apart from this, he was known for his excellent manners, which befitted an actor who played kings and military commanders. When the time of the People’s Republic came, the nature of the main character that was played out on stage changed. The recruitment of actors also changed: plebeian types were sought after - 'bricklaying teams' and 'girls on tractors who conquered the spring'. And once in a radio studio, before a recording, one such young, plebeian character came up to Jerzy Leszczynski. The legend goes that he went on to become a famous comic. I can easily imagine the contrast between Leszczynski, who sometimes wore a monocle, and a corpulent youth with a round face and turned-up nose. The young man introduced himself to the master: “I’m your colleague, a fellow actor.” Jerzy Leszczynski looked at him, shook his head and said: “You’re my colleague, a fellow actor? That means it’s time to die.” This scene must have occurred at the beginning of the fifties, perhaps even towards the end of the forties. Today, in the nineties, one can also spitefully say that it’s time to die for the era that began then. It’s time to die for the characters of the Polish People’s Republic romance. We’re returning to the pre-war years. Except that Jerzy Leszczynski will not return. The style or the culture of that time will not return. On the contrary, what is coming is different in quality and is often closer to the Polish People’s Republic than the pre-war era. Throughout my adult life (more precisely, from the second half of high school) I have made notes and I make them to this day. So, I’ve accumulated a few dozen notebooks which I’ve never attempted to read – I’m leaving that till I retire. Then, if I find the 2 time and desire, and if my sight still allows for it, I will return to what I noted down in that moment (and which I usually never read again). When I’ve broken this rule a few times, I’ve noticed that thirty years ago I often wrote exactly the same thing as I write today. They were therapeutic notes written to relieve tension, offload grievances and provide relief from failures. At other times, I had the feeling they were written by someone else entirely with whom I was not connected in any way, particularly when I expressed feelings that were long gone. So, that side of my writing – my diaries – are behind me or ahead of me. The world is not ending so radically that I would want to study the road that I've travelled from its beginnings. However, something has changed today on the very surface of life. Therefore, I would like to consider what can be saved and what should be buried and be freed even from its memory. What I’ve written up till this point sounds rather vague. Vague, in other words Polish – is what one of our greatest film critics, Boleslaw Michalek (who was spirited away into the diplomatic service), would say with irony. The fact that a great film critic becomes an ambassador is also a sign that it’s time to die – something’s finished, something’s changed. I have behind me a few dozen films which in their time gained audiences and were recognisable to a certain group of intelligentsia in the seventies. Today this group doesn’t watch films but are the most threatened generation on the cusp of history and during these changing times. For forty and fifty-year-olds it is most difficult to fathom what happened and it’s hardest for them to be themselves again during these changes. A system has collapsed. People, who had already determined their attitude to the world and their way of living, have found themselves once again in the situation of teenagers except that they don’t have energy, health or delusions, without which it’s impossible to cross the threshold into adulthood. And it has to be crossed a second time because the first time no longer counts. And we had to somehow manoeuvre in a world of real socialism, in its final form. Today, the art of manoeuvring is changing. We have to function differently if we want to make ends meet. And we have no choice as it’s still a long time till retirement and we don’t know who is going to pay our pensions because, for now, PZU (the leading insurance company in Poland) is not covered for its obligations. A fairly long time ago, I found myself in the West and I had a relatively large amount of time to familiarise myself with the artist's position in the free market. Thanks to that experience I hope that to some extent I know what awaits us and I try to stay optimistic and not to become disheartened. This is not a popular stance, nor is it an expression of solidarity. If everyone around me is complaining, then in keeping with our national ethos I should join them and complain even more. If someone has a headache and I say that I feel as right as rain, I’m acting antisocially. On the other hand, if even through sheer politeness I say that I also have a migraine, that helps. Meanwhile, I want to propose that it’s possible to free oneself from the migraine (at least to some extent) and try to explain how I do that. 3 I sit down to write for many reasons, one of which I mentioned above. I look for my past audience - those who once went to the cinema to see ‘The Structure of Crystal’, ‘Illumination’, The Constant Factor’. I write for those who went to see ‘The Spiral’ and who watched ‘Behind the Wall’ on the television. I have deliberately omitted from this list the film which had the most viewers in Poland and, more importantly, the largest number of visible signs of being liked. This was ‘Camouflage’. I will not be able to catch up with the viewers of this film. There were many of them and I think that they were partly the ones who organised strikes and formed ‘Solidarity’. It was a wonderful but I think a one-off meeting. I achieved political success by hitting on the atmosphere of a specific time. The success not only took me by surprise but was also to a greater degree accidental, so I can’t use it as a point of reference. But where today are those viewers who liked my other films – my thinking audience? Perhaps they’re at least reading books? Perhaps I’ll reach them through writing? I keep writing as if the end of a certain world was playing out only in Poland and Central Europe and that it was the unequivocal end of the Marxist era. Of course, this is our nearest perspective. The old power system broke down, our persecutors broke down, the Iron Curtain fell and we’re returning to Europe – these are the slogans from our side. But what happened in Europe? After all, a certain world has ended there too, a certain stage of culture’s development and we can’t fail to notice that next to us a structure has collapsed that’s even bigger than the one we’re trying to arduously get out from under the rubble of. European cinema is over. I don’t state this without justification. I look at the statistics and it turns out that in the last few years the share of European films on the screens of our continent amounts to a few, sometimes a dozen or so, per cent. In the United States all the European films together don’t even amount to one per cent of the cinema repertoire. In television it’s a similar situation. Yet I remember my childhood, in the late forties. At home we had a maid, who was later renamed a home help, and a caretaker, who was renamed the landlord and who from then on stopped cleaning. So, in my parent’s house the maid would invariably go to the cinema to watch American films and it was rightly considered that this was the appropriate repertoire for her.