|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Much before his wisdom and understanding of life bowls us over, Poland’s celebrated filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi’s amazing sense of humour strikes a chord. So on the Lifetime Achievement Award conferred on him at the International Film Festival of India, Goa, 2012, his first take is, "Behind this honour lies the obligation that I must soon die. But I am in mood to oblige." Yet, this is the man who has often confronted death in his films and believes, "Without appreciating death, one can’t value life." Death has been a central theme in his films like Spiral and Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease. So clearly, no one fathoms the inevitability of life coming to an end more than him. Only right now, he says, "I have this na`EFve hope and illusion that my best is yet to come." Never mind that the master filmmaker of over 80 films has already received more than 30 international awards, including the Cavalier’s Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order equivalent to our Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Golden Leopard and Golden Lion prizes came to him much early in life. Without doubt, his has been a decorated life. Yet he would neither comment on his evolution, nor summarise his momentous journey, or describe his unique visual language that stems from his grasp over science, philosophy and cinema. That, he says, is the critics’ job and laughs, "Once they said my work reflects moral anxiety, and later began quarrelling who said it first." Similarly, he wouldn’t pick up favourites among his films, "In different festivals, different films are liked." But he is happy that his much-awarded and appreciated film Illumination, which seeks answers to existential questions, was chosen at the festival. Preoccupied with reducing generational conflicts through his cinema, in his country too, he feels, pop culture is prevalent over high culture. Thus he argues that whatever is sophisticated will address a much smaller audience and needs to be supported. Yet interestingly enough, his remarks on India’s popular cinema are almost laudatory. He says, "Bollywood might be alien to my sensibilities but I have respect for it. I admire its fidelity to Indian ethos to the tradition of Sanskrit drama and popular culture. It is in the framework of Indian identity." About FTII, Pune, where he has in the past held several workshops, he is more circumspect. Divorced from it for many years now, he has issues with the way and the purpose for which it is training its students. On his diverse training, he first studied physics at Warsaw University and later philosophy to finally graduate in cinema from Ladz Film School, he quips, "Physics may not have loved me back but I have been faithful to my first vocation." Physics, according to him, is not engineering. It is closer to philosophy and notions of the unknown. The world anyway, he feels, is un-understandable, could be a story written by a madman. And science, he thinks, is not denying this inscrutability and mystery of life and matter, only helping understand it. The purpose of all art, he avers, is to promote beauty. But beauty, he reminds us, is also wisdom, which is not this or that but a complex phenomenon. As he continues to decode the many-dimensional reality in his films, including Weekend Stories, he is peeved by those who view the world from one angle and want the rest of the world to see it like that as well. Censorship is a manifestation of that insular mindset and, he feels it is an ugly way of telling people how to lead their lives. But censorship, he asserts, is not just of censor boards but could be imposed by intellectual coteries too. Just as in Poland, he faced resistance from extreme feminism, who found his portrayal of women in corporate jobs unflattering. It’s this monopoly of vision that disturbs him whose films have been about the larger cause of humanity. But he is hopeful of a future where nation states will become irrelevant and the world will become one large family bound by the wondrous discovery called internet. All set to make his next film, his moment of illumination of truth, he may still be in quest of, his movies, however, have and will continue to illuminate the world of cinema.
|
|||
|
|
|||
