Les fleurs bleues

'After Image' shows the struggle of one man against a system. The man is Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a Polish avant garde painter, and the system is postwar communism. Slowly, we see the man being destroyed by the system. Witnesses stand by, but are unable to do anything. That's how powerful totalitarianism is: any opposition, even from a harmless painter, is crushed.

In the very first scene, we see Strzeminski in a beautiful green meadow, teaching his pupils how to paint a landscape. When a new pupil presents herself, he literally rolls down the hillside to meet her - in spite of his disabilities: he misses one leg and one arm. Strzeminski is happy and upbeat. During the film, this proud man slowly transforms into a human wreck. At the end, he is no longer able to stand on his feet, let alone roll down a hillside.

Bit by bit, the communists make his life impossible. In a visually stunning scene, all light in his apartment turns red, because of a giant Stalin banner which is attached over his window. Furious, because he is no longer able to paint in natural daylight, he tears the banner with one of his crutches. It's the start of a fight against the system that turns out to be futile.

Director Andrzej Wajda, who died last year, shows Strzeminski as a man who lives for his art, and for nothing else. Even his teenage daughter is forced to move to an orphanage, because he doesn't seems to be interested in raising her. Wajda shows Strzeminski's weaknesses, but also his opponent's doubts. Many of them somehow sympathize with him, but are unable to show support without risking their own position. An example is the manager of the local museum, who cannot display his paintings, but carefully keeps them in storage.

Parallel with Strzeminski's decline, we witness also Poland's transformation from a proud nation into a Soviet-dominated satellite state, where communist propaganda is everywhere and the quality of life deteriorates rapidly. In one scene, Strzeminski is turned down by a shop selling painting materials, because his membership of the artist's union is withdrawn. He hides his disappointment and takes his daughter to the cinema. But there he finds out he has to watch Soviet propaganda. Disgusted, he leaves the theatre.

'After Image' shows an important episode of Poland's artistic history. At the same time, it is a warning against any totalitarianism, and an ode to artistic freedom.

"Illusions "are the latest film by famous Polish director . An extraordinary film achievement that has rounded its imposing opus. The film deals with a topic that is current at all times, that is, how to remain consistent and how to confront the region of a totalitarian and captured state. We all know this well, because from this form we did not move even for inch. If you have not approved it, if you are not applauding, if you are not similar, if you have your own opinion, the state will endeavor to show you its power to bring you under the livelihood line, as director magnificently presented in this biographical film about Polish painter . Extremely strong frames that plasticize all the misery of human life. Film for each recommendation.

A person sees only what they are aware of. This is the afterimage. For Wladyslaw Strzeminski, a real-life artist and professor in post- World War II Poland, the knife of awareness cuts both ways. A model communist citizen before it was fashionable to be so, Strzeminski finds himself at odds with indifferent, hollow politicians and struggles to maintain his integrity, after the war. Despite the artist's modest lifestyle, efficiency apartment, the loss of his legs in the war and desire just to paint, teach and take pleasure in such simple things as rolling in a meadow, he is slowly crushed by these unfeeling bureaucrats. He is even banned from buying art supplies. Beloved by his students, Strzeminski encourages their individual forms of expression and urges them to keep the boundary between art and politics.

The film scenes are precise and the transitions between them are remarkably fluid, scary good! The acting is exemplary. The actors are cast perfectly, especially the main actor and the young woman who portrays his long-suffering daughter. Such wonders are the marks of a masterful director. Wajda died just after the completion of the film. Wajda was the trusting sort, said a friend of his, just before the film began. Such trust in his crew paid dividends. Seen at the Miami International Film Festival.

this is the basic feeling. it is a film about present. not only for remind the Communist regime profound traces in every day life. but for the dictatorship of bureaucracy. for the desire of unanimity. for the role of person as tool. and for the politically correctness who is not real far by the Communist dictatorship. it is , in same measure, a significant last word of Wajda. not only as legacy. but as remember of his themes, message, precise exposure of the action of the evil, crash of the artist, forms of freedom out of political rules. a film about present, maybe, only from the perspective of an Easter European.

For what proved his cinematic swansong, the 90 year-old Andrzej Wajda came full circle, returning to the generation who provided the subject (and title) for the film that first made his name over 60 years ago. Wajda would have been the same age as the adoring students gathered around the avant-garde artist Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952) at the art school at Łódź he had co-founded in 1945; but as a one-man awkward squad he was soon drawing the fire of the postwar communist authorities.

The sustained official campaign of death by a thousand cuts inflicted on Strzemiński strongly recalls that depicted in Wajda's earlier 'Rough Treatment' (1978), to which 'Afterimage' often feels like a prequel. The earlier film, however, was an angry, brutally contemporary film, while 'Afterimage' - while vividly conveying the Orwellian nightmare that was Stalinist Poland - is a much mellower piece recalling the far-off days of Wajda's youth with a grace and energy wholly belying his astonishing age; and Andrzej Mularczyk's script gleams throughout with flashes of wry black humour. The film has few out and out villains, with most of Strzemiński's persecutors sympathetic but powerless to resist.

The jagged widescreen photography of Pawel Edelman and design by Marek Warszewski simultaneously evoke the monochromatic drabness of life under communism while often looking vaguely expressionistic, with odd flashes of colour skilfully deployed. (A particular visual highlight is the priceless scene early on in which his studio is saturated with red light from a banner of Stalin erected directly outside his window, to which his already characteristic response is guaranteed to get him into trouble.)

Bogusław Linda's performance as Strzemiński would be impressive enough even without the remarkable technical feat he accomplishes of nipping about on crutches minus his left arm and left leg, while Bronislawa Zamachowska is tremendous as his equally resilient and bloody-minded daughter Nika; truly a chip off the old block.