No End

No End is an important film in the canon of Polish director, Krysztof Kieslowski. It marks the beginning of two collaborations that would continue for the remainder of his films. The first is with lawyer turned screenwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz (who apparently helped to provide much of the structure of his films) and the second was with the amazing composer, Zbigniew Preisner. To watch this film is to watch a master filmmaker in development. Many themes and ideas from this film would later be echoed in his masterpiece, Three Colors: Blue. The film opens with a dead man speaking directly to the camera. His wife is left widowed with their young child. Much of the film follows her as she deals with the grief of her loss. The husband was a lawyer in life, and he died during an important political case. This takes place during the period of Communist martial law in Poland during the early-1980's, and a young man is put in prison for going on strike. The wife of the prisoner must get a new lawyer, so she turns to the aging mentor of the dead lawyer. He agrees to take the case and sees it as his final strong case, knowing that soon he may well be forced to retire. This subplot is interesting because the new lawyer advises the political prisoner to keep quiet since the state has little evidence against him. He sees that as being the best chance of getting him out of prison. However, the prisoner believes in the strike and wants to improve working conditions in a country that is slowly being devastated by a system doomed to fail. So, either he keeps quiet and gets out to be with his family, or he sticks to his principles and stays in prison for something less than a crime. A classic dilemma. However, for better or for worse, that is not the main focus of the film. As I mentioned before, the main focus is on the grieving widow and how she copes with the death of her husband. Kieslowski is profoundly insightful and probing into human nature, but, conditions being what they were at the time, a very bleak outlook on life. The stories come together almost clumsily at times, and this doesn't reflect the maturity of his later works, but I'd rather watch a movie like this than almost anything coming out these days. Stylistically, this film is more reflective of The Decalogue than his Three Colors Trilogy. He started out as a documentary filmmaker, and it shows in his early works. He shoots his subjects like a documentarian who desperately wants to get to the truth of these people. It's really rather remarkable. I mentioned the film's similarities to Blue, but not only in terms of the story and themes, but the score to this film is used as the "death theme" or "funeral song" in the latter film. It's a hauntingly beautiful piece of music from an incredibly talented composer.