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| Courtesy of Zespół Filmowy „X” |
The works of the late
great and uncompromising Polish provocateur Andrzej Żuławski, known
throughout the annals of world cinema for his 1981 English language Cannes Film
Festival shocker Possession starring Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill,
remain as timelessly fresh, frenetic and willfully difficult now as they did
when they first appeared before filmgoers in their day. A wholly original auteur with a still largely
unchecked cinematic bloodline of boundary pushing works, Żuławski left an
unshakable imprint on the face of the world cinema landscape that’s still being
absorbed, digested and debated to our present time.
His second feature The
Devil, a historical drama/horror film set during the Prussian invasion of
Poland in the 1790s, became the first of two times Żuławski’s work landed him
in trouble with the then Communist government in Poland but in the years since
has been reassessed as one of the director’s true masterpieces. Much like his subsequent works That Most
Important Thing: Love and Possession, the film’s heart and soul
stemmed from that of the réalisateur’s wry commentary on his distinctly Polish life
experiences. Rather than follow
conventional narrative structure, the films instead posit the viewer in a
frenzied state of hysteria that never really slows down until the picture
simply ends.
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| Courtesy of Zespół Filmowy „X” |
During
a prison riot, a nameless stranger (Wojciech Pszoniak) enters and flees a
prisoner named Jakub (Leszek Teleszyński) held on conspiracy charges to assassinate the
king. Sent with him on horseback is a
white-dressed nun named Zakonnica (Monika Niemczyk). From here, the film becomes an episodic
odyssey through historical Poland as the stranger and nun become something of
omniscient angels and devils upon Jakub’s shoulders as he and the picture move
from increasingly violent attacks to sexual taboos including but not limited to
intra-family on a steadily transgressive descent into Hell.
Vicious,
unforgiving and nightmarish, Żuławski’s film walks territory similar to the
hysterics generated by Ken Russell’s The Devils while also being a distinctive character study of a brutal man torn
between good and evil at a time when neither moral degree mattered. Unlike other medieval pictures which touched
upon the gulf between the demonic and angelic on a barren dead landscape
through a conventional narrative design, The Devil and its troubled and possibly psychopathic protagonist
tread these grounds seemingly in real time and almost at random as it raises
questions of whether or not the stranger or the nun or real or imagined.
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| Courtesy of Zespół Filmowy „X” |
Written
by Żuławski, the film shot exquisitely by Maciej Kijowski who incidentally also
dealt in witchfinder horror with Mother Joan of the Angels in a very woodsy open terrain divided by interior
encounters had by the film’s quasi-trio of characters. The film also sported an atonal avant-garde
score by longtime Żuławski collaborator Andrzej Korzynski that touches on the
experimental sound design deployed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on Ken Russell’s
aforementioned masterwork while also forecasting Żuławski’s own unique
perspective on music later used in Possession.
The ensemble
performances are rife with anxious feverish physical and emotional energy that
can be utterly exhausting to take as a viewer, with characters moving and
events happening at such a viciously violently rapid- fire pace you feel as
though the ground is giving way from under you.
Much of the heavy lifting is done by Pszoniak and Teleszyński as Jakub
and the nameless but clearly evil companion who encounter all manners of vulgar
and grotesque horrors in the seemingly lawless and amoral world depicted in Żuławski’s
film.
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| Courtesy of Zespół Filmowy „X” |
Then
there’s the film’s frank attitude towards sexual violence with concepts of rape
and murder or otherwise aberrant sexual misconduct coming up again and again
with many of the film’s female characters facing unforgivingly brutal ends
acted out bravely by the ensemble cast. Żuławski’s
film neither glorifies nor shies away from these horrors but rather depicts
them as a reality of the world of the movie as well as an extension of the
antihero’s own dealings with women as well as further implication of men being
exemplar of all things evil and impure and women being a paradigm of goodness.
Though
banned in Poland for most of the film’s shelf life after receiving a limited
release in 1972, it did eventually receive a general theatrical release in 1988
before a digitally restored version premiered on the year of the director’s death. Seen now the film is something like Dante’s Inferno through then-contemporary Poland
being in a state of madness while struggling to navigate the Hellhole towards
some kind of…redemption? Whatever
happens in The Devil, the moral position it has on
the world remains complex if not a little despondent.
Echoing
the works of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Dreyer and years later Von Trier, Żuławski’s
films remain timeless for their utter refusal to conform to mainstream standards
of storytelling discourse while freely writing new cinematic language the likes
of which hadn’t been seen before or since.
Not just in Polish cinema but cinema itself was being uprooted and reshaped
by Żuławski in ways we’re still just barely catching ourselves up to.
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| Courtesy of Zespół Filmowy „X” |
This is not easy viewing and is every bit as difficult
as nearly every Żuławski picture as I’ve come across to date but as such it stands
as a brilliant if not exhausting exercise in a new kind of contemporary
arthouse Polish cinema whose confounding brilliance is still being soaked up eagerly
by cinemagoers to this day. Not for all tastes but for the adventurous cinephile it is absolutely essential!
--Andrew Kotwicki
