A young man in his twenties leaves prison after a three-year sentence. He wants to start a new life in a place where he is not known and dreams only of a job, a wife and a family. He succeeds partially in fulfilling these dreams, but then runs into a conflict on a construction job between the corrupt boss and fellow workers secretly planning a strike. He becomes a pawn in one camp while remaining true to his ideals in the other. Filmed in 1976 and shelved for five years.
Calm Before the Storm, Paz y tranquilidad, La tranquillità, Nyugalom, 평화와 평온, Le Calme, 宁静
Poland
Poland
Of real interest for two reasons only, one being that this is for all intents and purposes, a tv-made trial run for THE SCAR — in all of it’s man-made, ideology-impregnated moral dilemmas rooted deeply in human nature. And two, the damn thing was banned as part of communist censorship and put under lock-and-key for 5 whole years before being released to the public. Meaning, my lil Kieslowski marathon is already all out of whack and order. Smh. Am I expected to do research beforehand or something.
Anyway, the movie. Impossible not to see the immediate through-line to his cinematic efforts. THE SCAR saw Kiesloeski manifesting his disagreement with radical solutions and pointing to an ambiguity of various social and…
Kieślowski had a great love for the documentary genre and it's well shown in Spokój. this almost journalistic style and loose script may be bothering, but the authenticity of the reality makes it up. Gralak's dreams can be seen as a manifesto for all workers in PRL. it's a brutally raw film, with a wise yet bitter story.
bo tak już jest, że drogo płaci ten, który wybrał nic nie tracić
Shelved for five years under the arrest of communist censorship, THE CALM is Kieślowski's unblinking critique of a corrupt Polish society during a time when labor strikes were considered illegal. It presents the story of a former convict looking to rejoin society, start over, find work, and get married, and how the forces of a crooked system inevitably draw him back into a lifestyle he desperately wants to escape. Michael Corleone's "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" is a fitting tagline. Here, Kieślowski is concerned with the ethical sphere of the working class forced to choose between their ideals and a rotten corporate entity, and the results are bleak.
It's a simple story simplified to…
Listen to our full discussion of this rough jewel on our new podcast series Mysterium Pictorum! Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and everywhere else, too!
In an abandoned underground city at the Spanish coast, near Malaga, I found a USB stick containing 300 random movies from arthouse to weird, from obscure to notorious. Now, in Lockdown, it is time to watch and discuss them all in an international podcast project. Two Turks and a German, two filmmakers and a mystery man - Welcome to Mysterium Pictorum!
SPKOJ / THE CALM - DIG A SLUT-HOLE!
Social Realism reminds me a lot of Mumblecore.
The documentary feel, the everyday stories, the meandering - It's like Mumblecore was the Social Realism…
It's wonderful to see Jerzy Stuhr working with Kieślowski. Perfect duo and their dynamic shines a very special light in the work they conceive, which is a very ironic and notable concept considering how much Kieślowski focuses on that very subject. Method directing, maybe. This one is also a really solid work made by Kieślowski, elevated by Stuhr’s spectacular performance. A gripping story laced by the rage and deception Kieślowski has towards the world, though it is still as raw.
Spokój follows a man, Antek, out of prison trying to get back into ‘normal’ living. But, his expectations get run over by the cruel truth of society. As well as shedding light on the hard effects pierced through the working…
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Kieslowski isn’t an especially subtle director, but when he finally started to integrate his on-the-sleeve sentiments directly into the aesthetics of his films (think THREE COLORS or several episodes of DEKALOG; hell, even NO END and BLIND CHANCE to some degree), at least the bluntness became... blunted by an overwhelming sensory experience. That is to say e.g. in BLUE, the literal color blue as a textural representation of both grief and liberation sounds kitschy as written, but the film explodes with such visual splendor that evaluating it under a purely pragmatic register just seems... wrong. It’s clearly a heightened expression of emotion through some specific ocular cue: In this case, blue. Kieswloski’s earlier films, however, during his transitional period…
Watched as an extra on the Arrow Academy Dekalog box set
Banned because it briefly showed a strike and had lots of talks about a strike. Poor Jerzy Stuhr, Kieslowski really puts him through the ringer in his films. Here Stuhr plays a guy who is released from prison and gets his life back on track for it to quickly come apart when his employer and his coworkers tussle and he is on the outside of both parties. Cool for a TV movie.
After having seen Jerzy Stuhr slip into madness in Szulkin's O-Bi, O-Ba I just thought that I will treat myself to a story of him getting bullied and roughed up by insufferable superiors and false friends on a construction side in some nameless industrial city. Some masochism for the Stuhr-Fan. This early Kieslowski has none of the existential ponderousness of his later films, some very nice touches of his humor and a great use of Stuhr. It turns out to be one of his dour morality plays already, but a honest one at that.
Kieslowski's The Calm was another narrative film which didn't really impressed me but, im glad he's making his own narrative stories than documatry.
A simple, unsophisticated tale of a man who wants the bare minimum for respectable living, and never quite seem to have it. That's what "The Calm" is, according to Kieslowski himself.
Kieslowski's argument about bureaucratic systems in this film, is poorly paced, doesn't set up it's conflict too well and gets very unsubtle towards the end, but is still as potent as ever. Drawing from the themes that would be masterfully explored in "The Scar", this film is more intimate in nature. It doesn't seek to study the failing of such systems on communities, but on individuals. Kieslowski, who has seen hubris, mismanagement and corruption within the system perpetuate a vicious cycle of blame, scapegoating and decay, the trappings of…
It’s very interesting to experience Kieślowski through The Three Colors trilogy and The Dekalog, and then go back to his earlier works. What a filmmakers journey.
Film jest pięknie nakręcony, z klimatycznym użyciem kolorów idealnie pasujących do nastroju. Można stwierdzić, że jest to najlepsza kreacja Jerzego Stuhra. Bardzo intrygujące jest wykorzystanie dźwięku i ciszy. Choć mniej znany niż późniejsze dzieła Kieślowskiego, warto się z nim zapoznać.
