772 Blind Chance

[swo17]

Blind Chance



Before he stunned the cinematic world with the epic The Decalogue and the Three Colors trilogy, the great Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski made his first work of metaphysical genius, Blind Chance, a compelling drama about the difficulty of reconciling political ideals with personal happiness. This unforgettable film follows Witek (a magnetic Boguslaw Linda), a medical student with an uncertain future in Communist Poland; Kieślowski dramatizes Witek's journey as a series of different possibilities, suggesting that chance rules our lives as much as choice. First suppressed and then censored by the Polish government, Blind Chance is here presented in its complete original form.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration of the original uncensored film, approved by cinematographer Krzysztof Pakulski, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with Polish film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski
• Interview with director Agnieszka Holland from 2003
• Nine sections from the film originally censored by the Central Film Board in Poland
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Dennis Lim and a 1993 interview about the film with director Krzysztof Kieślowski

[captveg]

Interesting that they're going with the production year rather than the eventual release year of 1987 after its suppression. They did the opposite with Ivan the Terrible Part II back in the day.

[swo17]

I suppose this explains the Kino Kieślowski set going OOP a while back.

[knives]

I wish they had included a few more shorts on the disc.

[artfilmfan]

Nice to see Criterion releasing this and with a 4K restoration. I hope someday they'll release No End also.

[jp4151]

I saw this uncensored version at Los Angeles County Museum last August. It looked great. I noticed a few additions here and there, the most obvious one being an extended moment of the main character getting attacked by security guards on the train. At one point in this very brief sequence, the image freezes and text appears on screen stating that this censored shot could not be found, but the soundtrack does continue to the end of the scene. I wonder if Criterion will present it this way as well.

Oh, and that night was a double feature with "A Short Film about Killing", also newly restored. Here's hoping Criterion will release that too, but as a supplement to the complete Decalogue set that I've been dreaming about for years.

[britcom68]

Does anyone have the details yet where the interview with Agnieszka Holland is coming to us from- besides the year 2003?
It would be interesting to see if Criterion finally steps up and releases Europa Europa. [-o<

[warren oates]

Though I'd rather see her underrated follow-up to that Olivier, Olivier.

[britcom68]

Though I'd rather see her underrated follow-up to that Olivier, Olivier.

I agree, it is overlooked and shouldn't be. In the past decade we have had two films I had high hopes for in a similar mold, "Birth" and Eastwood's The Changeling but neither of those films succeeds when then should. "Birth" would have worked much better if the child had been younger, making the story more psychologically complex and making the deception a greater loss for Kidman's character. The thing about "Birth" that got me is that it reminds me of the anecdote about why Hitchcock abandoned his post-Marnie project, "The Three Hostages." Because you can't expect to put something psychologically non-traditional, in his case it was hypnotism, and expect the viewers to go along with it completely as the key plot point. For "Birth," it was expecting the viewers to believe reincarnation is a possibility the grown adult characters could be persuaded to accept, especially from an unknown child.

For Eastwoods Changeling the issue was focusing so much on the many struggles from the single mother and not on why a child would want to change places with another child or knowingly contribute to abuse upfront. Waiting until the story progresses into the courtroom/police investigation to find out about the child's past is a cheat for me, it puts the adult characters in the dominating exposition role and we don't have the chance to try and see the story from the child's perspective told from themselves until we have figured out the story for ourselves.

Olivier, Olivier is still a great ride even today,mostly because we know that this cannot be the same child physically, but we are left wondering if it is possible he truly wanted to change places emotionally and even see those around him in the surrogate family who are knowingly accepting a doppelganger on that level. Europa Europa has moments like that too, but I do not like that Holland film as much. I can't stop thinking while I am watching "Europa" how much of this was true, how much is exaggerated and what is purely invention. That is why Holland's Olivier, Olivier works better for me, it allows room for the more unusual responses from the characters since they are not actually based on real historical figures. It was no surprise to see Holland get involved with last year's TV adaptation of "Rosemary's Baby," I think her "Olivier" is the best film I could recommend in the genre of children-changing places that has no true demonic overtones/characters yet still has great psychological tension.

[warren oates]

You might want to check out that documentary called The Imposter too.

[dadaistnun]

Beaver

[criterion10]

Man, is that one barebones release!

Anyway, it does look gorgeous, so there's that.

[manicsounds]

blu-ray.com

[TMDaines]

Man, is that one barebones release!

Anyway, it does look gorgeous, so there's that.

It has three extras and a booklet?!

[McNulty]

While watching this in a sleepy daze last night, I noticed a dropped frame at 01:29:22. Anyone notice this? I wonder if this is due to the source material, or just a slip-up on Criterion's part. Code Unknown (another Kino acquired title) has similar issues.

[JeffreySchroeck]

Nice to see Criterion releasing this and with a 4K restoration. I hope someday they'll release No End also.

I try to not hold the quality of the version I'm seeing against the film, but this restoration versus the Kino DVD is such an improvement that it almost felt like a different film. Hopefully we get one or two more from that set this year.

On the negative side, that autopsy cadaver's belly fat in glorious HD is even more disgusting than ever.

[movielocke]

About one hour in, I was thinking to myself how disappointed I was, I'd never been let down by a Kieslowski film before. Then the film shifts. Click. the whole experience was suddenly transformed and I was completely in love with the film, like all the other Kieslowski films. For me, at least, his films have a way of sneaking up on me, where I'm going along with the film, enjoying it, and then suddenly I'm profoundly moved and involved, my viewing goes from cruising to deeply introspective and meditative. It's a glorious feeling, every time it happens, and it happened for each of the four other Kieslowski features and the big one (the miniseries).

By the end of the film, I was as profoundly moved and affected as I was the first time I saw the Double Life of Veronique. This is a masterpiece on par, with that one, Kieslowski's best, imo. I'm blown away and still collecting my thoughts.

[knives]

Converse to the above I haven't really been on for Keislowki in the past (though Red and Blue are good for me), but the first story here worked for me fantastically. There's a good sense of humour and drama throughout being both very specific to Poland and its politics and making sense across the whole landscape of cold war politics. Even his various camera tricks, such as the POV play at the beginning, make sense to the themes and characters expanding the sense of both and bleeding them into each other. It actually reminded me a lot of late '60s Godard particularly A Married Woman and 2 or 3 Things. The film throughout this dense first story is intensely repetitive in that Kieslowski way, but with a fair amount of subtlety that sort of renders the whole film's structure obsolete ironically enough. The other two stories are nice, but aren't given enough time to flesh out on their own and this become totally dependent on the first which works well for some themes and repetitions, but never becomes engaging in their own right. As powerful as the last shot is and how dependent it is upon the structure of the whole film I was still left wondering what did it add.

[jaffe1234]

What is going on with the aspect ratio here? IMDB and even Criterion webpage and back cover say it's 1.66:1, but it looks to be more like 1.72:1 or something. I assume the so small difference that it would be within margin of error when projected on film (is it so?), but as an quite obsessive person these kind of differences sometimes make bit anxious because I fear that I'm not seeing it framed as intended.

[MichaelB]

What is going on with the aspect ratio here? IMDB and even Criterion webpage and back cover say it's 1.66:1, but it looks to be more like 1.72:1 or something. I assume the so small difference that it would be within margin of error when projected on film (is it so?), but as an quite obsessive person these kind of differences sometimes make bit anxious because I fear that I'm not seeing it framed as intended.

Since the restoration was overseen by both cinematographer Krzysztof Pakulski and sound recordist Michał Żarnecki (the latter a very close personal friend of Kieślowski, and who may have notched up more credits on Kieślowski films - and therefore been present on more Kieślowski sets - than any other single individual bar the man himself), I'm entirely relaxed about it being presented precisely as intended.

Polish aspect ratios can be a law unto themselves - unlike, say, the former Czechoslovakia (where, with remarkably few exceptions, films prior to the Velvet Revolution were either in 1.37 Academy or 2.35:1 Scope), Polish films are all over the place, and unconventional aspect ratios aren't uncommon either. For instance, the recent Dekalog restorations were presented at 1.4:1 instead of 1.33:1, although when I played both framings side by side when working on the Arrow edition I consistently found the 1.4:1 compositions more pleasing to the eye. (Although it's fairly academic in this case, because the Dekalog films were made to be broadcast on overscanned 4:3 CRT sets, so Kieślowski - a very experienced television director - would certainly have allowed for this when framing.)

[Boosmahn]

Dennis Lim's essay introduced a theory to me that I'm gravitating towards.

Spoiler

The first two acts are a dream Witek has in the moments leading up to his death. I want to note that I don't think this theory diminishes the film's themes of fate and chance. (If the first two scenarios happened, it's entirely possible they would have played out in those ways.) I'm merely looking at it from a plot-based standpoint.

Here are my pieces of evidence:

1. Witek's lovers in the first two parts were people he knew (the third to a lesser extent). One of them was his first girlfriend, which could be his mind's way of revisiting suppressed regret.
2. He happens to run into, and recognize, a childhood friend. Once again, his mind's way of assuaging regret?
3. He does not become a doctor in only the first two scenarios, perhaps spurned on by his father's last words.
4. Olga says to Witek she was watching him sleep, but trails off. In the second part, Witek's friend is crying in his sleep. Though this is probably character development for his friend, I wanted to mention it.

Am I completely off the mark?

[MichaelB]

Sorry, but I don't buy any of that.

Spoiler

1. There's no evidence that Witek knew Werka any better than he knew Olga - she was Daniel's older sister, and when you're twelve (the age that Witek and Daniel were when they were separated), a four-year age gap seems like half a lifetime. And his relationship with Czuszka in part one is toe-curlingly awkward to watch - they're an obvious mismatch from the start (remember the comparatively early scene in which she finds his application to join the Communist Party?), which doesn't really chime with your theory either - surely if he was mentally revisiting an old flame he'd arrange events so they were rather more romanticised?

2. The function of the entire subplot with Daniel is based around Kieślowski's evident desire to insert a reference to Władysław Gomułka's anti-Semitic purges of 1968, something that meant a great deal to him as it was the first time he'd ever taken a public political stance on a controversial issue. So if any regret is being assuaged, I suspect it has more to do with Kieślowski coming to terms with the fact that he backtracked partway through (apparently following a police interrogation whose contents he never divulged) and ended up taking a more conservative political stance, much to the surprise and in some cases disgust of his fellow Łódź film students.

Conversely, Witek has no particular connection with 1968 - he was only twelve at the time - and he clearly had nothing to do with Daniel's departure. So what regret is Witek assuaging?

3. True, but I'm not sure how this is "evidence" of anything other than the concept of the narrative splitting three ways. And he decides not to become a doctor even before the split first happens, eventually changing his mind in part three.

4. Surely the episode of Daniel crying (and he's not asleep at the time) is intended as a direct parallel with the episode of Witek crying near the start of the film? Especially given that what triggered the crying in both cases is the very recent loss of a parent?

And you also have to take into account that:

Spoiler

5. Witek reacts with anger and frustration to the fact that he fails to catch the plane at the end of the first two sections. Why would his "dreams" end like that, if he's already aware that the plane is about to crash?

[soundchaser]

I’m not sure what that theory would add to the film — not to shut on it too much, but it feels like the Kieslowski equivalent of “Mace Windu is Snoke,” in that its relation to what’s presented onscreen is tenuous at best, and it wouldn’t actually mean anything.

[MichaelB]

The other two stories are nice, but aren't given enough time to flesh out on their own and this become totally dependent on the first which works well for some themes and repetitions, but never becomes engaging in their own right. As powerful as the last shot is and how dependent it is upon the structure of the whole film I was still left wondering what did it add.

I think Kieślowski was perhaps a bit too subtle - or too ruthless at the editing stage, as the scenario makes things a fair bit clearer - in that there are regular hints of what's about to happen at the end, but presented so obliquely that you could easily completely miss them, especially on a first viewing.

But basically it all revolves around a mysterious character called Buzek, who seems to have been largely cut out of the film aside from a very brief encounter between him and Witek towards the end of part two - remember the man that we assume (correctly) is Werka's husband? That's him. And remember Werka describing his job as being an aircraft engineer? Well, in part one we're also told that there's a guy named Buzek who's an aircraft engineer - and what should have happened in part three is that he unexpectedly fails to turn up to work on the day of Witek's flight.

According to the original conception, Buzek plays a more overt role in the film, and I suspect what happened was something similar to what happened with Dekalog One (which is why that runs a couple of minutes shorter than the other Dekalogs), which is that at a fairly late stage Kieślowski realised that he didn't really need all this explanatory backstory (in the published screenplay of Dekalog One we're told in wholly unnecessary detail just why the ice unexpectedly cracked - something about a factory pumping boiling water into the lake) and simply cut it wholesale. I don't know precisely what changes Kieślowski made during the post-production of Blind Chance, but I understand that they were fairly extensive, and the numerous differences between the finished film and the published scenario bear this out - and the almost-but-not-quite removal of Buzek was one of the most striking alterations. I suspect Kieślowski ultimately felt that this subplot was a little too pat and he preferred the notion of a sudden, violent change to Witek's life just coming out of the blue with no warning.

[knives]

That's pretty interesting and if I were to ever watch this again I imagine quite useful.