THROUGH AND THROUGH
space,” a concept that explains how he expands a viewing experience beyond what’s on the screen. Thus Through and Through is marked by swerving camera angles and disorienting spatial configurations, moments when char- acters are clearly relating to an unseen event or person. At times, as when Jan and Maria alternate leaving the scene—a park bench—the use of off-camera space pro- duces humorous effects. Other times, as in an elevator ride that Jan takes at the printing press, the continuous, dramatically lit shots convey a disquieting, anxious mood. In Through and Through’s crime scene, the first sequence takes place entirely off-screen; we catch the sounds of a scuffle emanating from behind a closed door. Only then do we see the act, which, while monstrous, is also helplessly grotesque. Here Królikiewicz borrows a page from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (he wrote a book-length analysis on the film). In Citizen Kane, Welles introduces a cohesive story (via a newsreel) only to then shatter it by
presenting multiple, conflicting viewpoints. Królikiewicz achieves a similar effect: Bogdan Dziworski’s inventive camera work, the non-diegetic sound and jolting cuts constantly push us to question just how much we know about the characters or their actions. Perhaps more than any Polish film of that time, Through and Through is a bold cinematic experiment. If in Through and Through the real-life events are a germinating seed, they are the core of Królikiewicz’s most audacious hybrid, The Case of Pekosiński. Shot in 1993, four years after communism’s fall in Poland, the film stars a real-life former chess champion. Królikiewicz read about Bronek Pekosiński in a newspaper, and cast both him and Romuald Karaś, a journalist who had been following his story since the 1960s, to play themselves. From the start, the project was unique: Pekosiński’s alco- holism was severe enough to have rendered him unfit for filming. Before he could begin, Królikiewicz needed
19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52