No End

Grazyna Szapolowska's husband dies. He was a public defender, so she tries to arrange for his last client, Artur Barcis, to have a good defendant. She arranges for Aleksander Bardini, under whom her husband had apprenticed, to take the case. Barcis is accused of having led an illegal strike, and Bardini works to have him tread the middle ground of confessing and denial.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's movie is a murky one that tells us we can never tell what is going on at the moment. Only in retrospect can we figure out what was going on, and even that may not be true. It is a gloomy movie, with a lot of motivation left unclear. Did Miss Szapolowska really love her husband? Why has Bardini, who hasn't taken a case of this sort for more than 30 years, taken this one? What was the strike actually about? That remains uncertain, even after the movie's end.

Mesmerising, if only for the performance by Grazyna Szapolowska as the widow who moves through the film and ignites every scene. Beautiful and tragic at once she emanates power over the audience and one cannot turn away. I had not realised how much this film must have influenced some established mainstream films that we assume to be original. Obviously many of them owe a great debt to this story. Told unflinchingly by Kieslowski in a unshowy manner it still demonstrates moments of brilliant insights into the human condition. The pain and torture we must endure after such heartache runs through the the heart of this film. I particularly liked the little moments as always, such as the glass slipping through her fingers, the dog trying to get in the car, the dirt on her hands from the bumper whilst witnessing the accident, the hypnotherapy session where she sees him. All simple and yet so elegant. No hammering it through to the audience with big signposting saying 'Remember this for later!'. Why don't more films treat the audience with a tiny bit more intelligence or is the majority of film going to assume we are all thick. And just because a film is mainstream doesn't mean it has to be low brow. Godfather, Deer Hunter, French Connection? Very strong films? If you see this also see Amator.

Written by Kieslowski and Piesiewicz, NO END stars the beautiful and beguiling Grazyna Szapolowska as the widow of a lawyer who suddenly died of a heart attack. Her late husband, Antek (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) was in the middle of defending a man arrested for his part in a strike at a factory. His widow, Ursula, suggests that the arrested man be represented by Antek's teacher, an old lawyer named Labrador (Aleksander Bardini), and becomes peripherally involved in the case as she works through her grief. Antek's ghost makes his presence felt in surprising ways.

No End has been compared to the later French movie BLEU, starring Juliette Binoche, but it's a much more sober offering, more enigmatic. One has a feeling of lives interrupted, like being stuck in an elevator, fearful that the cable could break or the doors open upon something horrible. Not that the film is scary or suspenseful, but simply that the characters, people generally, are at the mercy of forces they cannot understand, beyond their control.

Fans of the Colours Trilogy and of the Double Life of Veronique will probably enjoy this. It has all Kieslowski's magic, his special way with light and shadow.

I state for the record that I did not understand this film fully. The second plot with Solidarnost protester imprisoned and released by the court is not completely clear to me. Yet it has little to do with politics and more with human condition (ideals, expectation, compromise). Prisoner's family doesn't react happily upon his immediate release in a court room. There is awkwardness and embarrassment in that scene, as if some unforgivable compromise has been made and it tainted all of their relationship. Accident scene with a death of motorist seems random but reoccurring theme in Kieslowskij movies. Randomness of death, randomness of existence. Movie is wonderfully shot , music (as always) is haunting. I just cannot put it all together in my mind like I could with Veronique.

The narrative in this film is far too flawed. There are two intertwining halves of it, one good, one poor. The good one involves a woman, Ulla, whose husband died suddenly and unexpectedly one morning while he waited in his car to take their son to school. Now he gently haunts his family as they deal with the pain. The acting is magnificent here. Kieslowski is masterful at directing his actors in material like this, as he would show a million different times in The Decalogue, made a few years later. There are a few outrageously and subtly powerful scenes. Most memorable is the one where Ulla decides to prostitute herself to a British tourist. This happens about a month after her husband has died. After the man has sex with her, she asks him if he speaks Polish. He says no, and then she begins to talk about her problems in Polish. The other half of the plot is utterly weak in comparison. The husband was a lawyer, and the defendant in the case he was working on is screwed because of the death. The defendant's wife comes to Ulla for help, and though she is refused help at first, Ulla eventually introduces her to her husband's mentor, a cynical old man about to be kicked out of the business. Perhaps it's just my aversion to lawyer and courtroom dramas, but I just didn't care a lick what happened in this part of the plot. Supposedly it's meant as a criticism against the Communist law at the time. I don't know. It's dull whatever it is. But the film is slightly worth watching, especially for the acting. Even in the parts that I didn't care for, the acting is exquisite. 7/10.