No End (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1985)
Grażyna Szapołowska and Jerzy Radziwilowicz in No End
Cast: Grażyna Szapołowska, Maria Pakulnis, Aleksander Bardini, Artur Barciś, Danny Webb, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krzysztof Krzeminski, Michal Bajor. Screenplay: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Cinematography: Jacek Petrycki. Production design: Allan Starski. Film editing: Krystyna Rutkowska. Music: Zbigniew Preisner.
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s No End takes place during the suppression of Solidarity and the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1982, producing the melancholy, despairing tone that pervades the entire film. Kieslowski and his co-screenwriter, Krzysztov Piesiewicz, place the underlying politics in the context of personal loss, the death of the lawyer Antek Zyro (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) and its effect on his wife, Urszula (Grazyna Szapolowska), and child (Krzysztof Krzeminski). Having the dead Antek address the camera at the film’s beginning is a bold move, one that threatens to turn the film into a sentimental fable about a love that persists after death. But as we see, the relationship of husband and wife was not an ideal one, and the feeling of guilt that she experiences after his death is potently developed. (I’m not sure it entirely justifies the film’s ending, however.) A premature death like Antek’s inevitably results in unfinished business, not only in the life of his family but also in the legal case, that of the incarcerated political prisoner Darek Stach (Artur Barcis) he left undefended. The defense of Stach devolves upon Mieczyslaw Labrador (Aleksander Bardini), the aging lawyer who would not have been Antek’s choice for the role. Labrador saves Stach from a longer prison term by engineering a compromise with the judge, a move opposed by Labrador’s own assistant (Michal Bajor), who still clings to some of the ideals of the suppressed Solidarity movement. The decision makes no one really happy, because Stach, like everyone else in Poland, isn’t really free. The interweaving of the Stach case and Urszula’s attempts to resume a normal life despite grief and guilt is sensitively handled, with the great help of Krystyna Rutkowska’s editing and Zbigniew Preisner’s score.
