pop culture

He wanted his audience to be interested in his films....and so we are. He wanted to stir people to something...he does. He wanted to inspire us...and that he did. Fans of Krzysztof Kieslowski, film buffs and aspiring filmmakers alike will get as much out of his story told in "Kieslowski on Kieslowski" as through his cinematic works of art.

Although not a very long career, due to his untimely death, it certainly was an illustrious one. And how fortunate we are to have had the filmmaker who brought us the beautiful and moving films "The Double Life of Veronique", the "Three Colours Trilogy" and the unbelievably intuitive "Decalogue", tell us in his own words his views on life and what he was thinking during the filming of these works.

The book, wonderfully edited by Danusia Stok, takes in Kieslowski's early years as a child, his film school years, his early short films and finally the feature films. Kieslowski is open and frank about his life and his work. He didn't see himself as a genius at all(we fans may tend to disagree on that point),quite the contrary he tends to point out what he feels were mistakes and his shortcomings. He talks of working in Poland, having to skirt around the political upheaval around him, films he made that were never shown to the public, and his quest for trying to make the stories as authentic as possible.

He discusses each and every film. He gives much of the credit to the cast and crew and although he touches on what the films meant to him,he usually speaks more of the technical aspects of each than the analytical.He talks of what was going on in the world, his life and his mind during the making of each film. The feature films are given more time and one whole chapter is devoted soley to "Three Colours"(these films were still in the editing stages at the time this book was written).

Included are many still photos of working on the sets, and personel pictures with his family, the actors and his collaborators. There is a section devoted to notes on many of the names and events, and also a complete filmography with a brief summary and list of credits for each film.

"You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else and it doesn't matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of the intellect"....Krzysztof Kieslowski

Kieslowski lets us know in this book that we don't have to analyze each scene...just enjoy it for what it is. This book is a must read for fans and filmmakers alike!...So...enjoy...Laurie

Possibly the last of the really great European art film directors discusses his life and work. The tone of this book was a bit of a surprise. Unlike such visionary auteurs as Bergman and Tarkovsky, Kieslowski is funny, sarcastic, and deprecating, both about himself ("I was a complete idiot") and his country ("Poles will willingly drown another Pole in a glass of water"). And the art of cinema comes across here as a somewhat ridiculous chore, with fleeting and intermittent rewards. You may spend some time puzzling over whether Kieslowski is being accurate and sincere, or just having you on.

However, there's a wealth of insight and information in this book, about KK's films, the art of cinema in general, Poland and its history, and the ideas that animated KK throughout his career. If you have yet to discover such great films as "The Decalogue", "The Double Life of Veronique", and "Blind Chance", reading this book will whet your appetite. If you already know them, you'll gain further insights. And this book is just a great read, almost like a first-person confessional novel in its style. Stories like the one about how Kieslowski feigned insanity to avoid military service make it entertaining even if you don't care about movies!

This is a well-organized and informative book. While it is based on a series of interviews, the Q&A format is not used; instead, Stok lets Kieslowski narrate in his own words various stages in his life and films he has made. The effect is that of eavesdropping on a chance monologue, or that of a very colloquial autobiography. Although Stok (I think) happens to be the wife of one of Kieslowski's main cameramen, personal sentiments do not get in the way at any point. This book also contains, in addition to the compulsory stills from his documentaries and movies, various other interesting material such as photographs that Kieslowski himself took as a student at Lodz Film School.

The portrait of Kieslowski that emerges is of an overwhelmingly modest, considerate, private, and above all *humane* human being, self-deprecating to the extreme even after his international success as a director. He dismisses his vocation as the worst job in the world, hilarious (issuing directions via microphone and speaker, freezing, to a half-clad Grazyna Szapolowska atop a makeshift tower at 2am) and insignificant(his frustrating administrative experiences as a member of the Polish filmmaking guild). However, you realize that the poignant messages that come through in his films are the result of a unique personal/private sensitivity; he tries to articulate the manner in which outside events touch the individual, and hopes to touch the individual in the audience through his work. You can't reproach him for insisting that "you will never know what is deep inside me, no one will ever know, the experience is mine alone."

The only thing I felt was missing from the book was Kieslowski's final pronouncement on the Blue/White/Red series, since the final interviews were conducted while he was still editing. Also, it does not answer every single question you have about his films - what does the hunchbacked old woman who creeps through Veronique and the Trilogy signify? What does Veronique's clear rubber ball mean? At times, I realized that Kieslowski's narrative and symbolic intentions were really much simpler than what I had imagined to be. In all, this book is not the terminus in your quest to discover the essence of Kieslowski, but provides a heartwarming, personal portrait to base further navigations on.