No amarás

I have watched this movie 10 years ago when I was feeling that love was an impossible happiness to achieve and it always accompanied disappointments.

Now that I am a happy man and I am not so pessimistic about love and life. However, this movie still fills my soul with wonder: How can love, disappointments and life be described so beautiful, like a poem, stylish and touching...

I will remember it as long as I believe in love.

Unlike the other masterpiece in his Decalogue, Killing, in 'A Short Film About Love' Kieslowski treats the subject of love with an extraordinarily delicate, rather than a polemic, eye. As ever he manages to express more with subtlety than most directors ever will with expression: it is rather what is not said, what is not expressed, that leaves an indelible mark upon us.

Olaf Lubaszenko's central performance as the boy is, rather than 'opaque' as it has been termed, engrossing from the start. His innocence and fragility, just like the film's, are an invitation to the intimacy we progressively acquire. We, the film's audience, watch engrossed and exposed just as does he, and, in another sense, does the subject of his observations. His telescope becomes a direct motif; distance, separation, enlargement: all the things the filmmaker provides for the viewer. Thus, at emotional, intellectual and metacinematic levels the film explores its themes: observation and love.

While it may not come to solid conclusions (nor ought it to), the sensitivity with which the director watches his actors is utterly compelling. The resultant negotiation between man and women, subject and observer, viewer and filmmaker is a relationship, a love affair. Perhaps Barthes might have sought to go further, waiting for the end of the film, its 'death', to find psychological and sexual consummation to such an affair, and the film may support such a reading. Even a far less academic approach is sufficient, however, in order to enjoy the work at it appears at face value. We do not need to analyse in order to feel, and it is the film's emotional impact that remains when our brief voyeurism, our visit to the cinema, ends.

Kieslowski's movies are very unique in the sense of reflecting on feelings. One needs to think outside of the box and try to go beyond the surface... His goal is not to create an average love story, but to put love bare as it is in the center. What is love? One could list a number of adjectives, to say the least; but instead let's just use one sentence: love wants nothing in return. To love and being loved, two sides of a coin, is presented to us in this beautiful movie. Little conversation, nice music, great frames and shots, well-chosen actors, actresses, although very few; intense, touching, and serious.

It helps a bit if the watcher knows some about Eastern-European culture. But it is by no means necessary. One should only have been given the gift of being loved and to have loved.

We've seen various riffs on Hitchcock's 'Rear Window' since the release of the said masterpiece in 1954. We've seen Brian De Palma dive further into the voyeuristic core of 'Rear Window' and double down on the sleaziness to show us the dark underbelly of the show business lifestyle in Los Angeles in 'Body Double'. We've seen 'Disturbia' which was a bit of remake of 'Rear Window' specifically made mainly with the teenage/young adult demographic in mind. But in my opinion, out of all the films made subsequently that play around with the inherent 'peeping tom' gimmick of 'Rear Window', the only one(out of the ones I've seen) that distinguishes itself and deserves to be called a 'masterpiece' in its own right is Kieślowski's 'A Short Film About Love'.

The shortened version of the film was used for Episode 6 for the epic mini-series 'Dekalog'. In my opinion both the shortened version as well as this longer film version have their own distinct personalities. The film works as a subversion of conventions as well as a deep exploration of the abstract concept of 'love'. It is a subversion of conventions, because we see an immensely sensitive depiction of a young man who is a primarily a peeping tom, and he spends his time secretly watching an attractive older woman who lives in the opposite apartment, which is inherently creepy. But the twist is that Tomek doesn't do it for sexual stimulation, he does it because watching this woman(Magda) go about her mundane daily routine gives him a different form of stimulation which he describes as 'love'. Once the central surface element of the peeping goes out of the way in the narrative, in the 2nd half of the film, Kieślowski doubles down on the concept of 'love' and starts asking questions through the two central characters Tomek and Magda. Does 'love' have a place to exist in the modern world or is it a thing of the past? Can a romantic connection between two human beings be forged only through sex with eventual orgasms, or is there something beyond the desires of the flesh, something more transcendent? The film also ends up answering these questions or at least Kieślowski gives us a clear indication of his attitude towards the concept of 'love' in his characteristic poetic ways.

As I wrote earlier, there are various moments of poetry or poetic realism in the film that transcend grounded, realistic storytelling. Like the moment where Magda after an argument with one of her lovers spills the milk which Tomek delivered at her doorstep, all over her table as Tomek looks on from his apartment room via the telescope. Or the moment of pure joy after Tomek asks Magda out on a date,etc. With the ending, Kieślowski goes beyond poetic realism and ventures into territories of magical realism but without compromising the humane, tender tone of the film. The ending to the film actually is remarkably different to the ending of the shortened episode in 'Dekalog', but they both make the same thematic implication.

The acting from the two central actors Olaf Lubaszenko and Grażyna Szapołowska is nothing short of special. Their individual scenes as well as the scenes that they share together are incredibly rich with subtlety, with pathos and with genuine emotions. Apart from the actors, something else that has to be admired for helping Kieślowski with the film is the beautiful music and score by Zbigniew Preisner which is rich with a sense of melancholic sweetness.

Highly Recommended.

I suppose Gaspar Noe never seen this film, otherwise he would've known how to make a movie about love.

I have no words...