Passer-By (1984) - full transcript

foodval.com - stop by if you're interested in the nutritional composition of food
---
Film Studio Ki
presents

Film by Andrzej Titkow

PASSER-BY

With

Also With

- Do you believe in man?
- What a terrible question.

So extremely exalted one does
not know what to answer.

If I say I do not believe
in man

and I would like to lock everyone
up in concentration camp,

it would not be good for art.
An artist should say —

I love people and I dream
that all people can be happy.



This is not a question for
the first night performance.

I don’t believe in man,

man is a freebooter.

Please, ask me a normal,
European question.

l was brought up in a cult
of mankind,

mm“?

uniqueness as a phenomenon
in the universe.

When I saw terrible
human misery,

pettiness, wickedness

I learned to be cautious.

I am a pilgrim.

I am coming back
to my homeland from far.

What does bring you here?

- I came to right wrongs.
- Did you hurt people?



- l was hurt.
- Who did it?

Maybe you, maybe he,
maybe they...

People helped me a lot.
I was lucky, I guess.

Wherever I went,
whenever I got anywhere,

I owe it a great number
of people.

Some of them were well-known
and famous, some were anonymous.

Maybe in a certain way I should
also be grateful to my censors.

You may think What you Will
but I have been through a lot.

This isn’t anything new
in this country.

If I wrote it in a book,
nobody would believe it.

l governed people and built roads.

l distributed houses
and begged for bread.

I shot at a man and was strangled
With concertina Wire.

All this shyness of mine,
all my weird behaviour,

all my fears stem from my...

...fear of ridiculousness.

This particular fear probably
has some deeper roots.

Anyway, this element... I don’t have
to tell all and reveal all.

Look at the genius

Who walked triumphantly
through the World.

He still moves himself and moves
you although almost a century old.

l have never wanted to become
a professional writer

or a professional film-maker.

There is some vanity in it.

I don’t write or collect letters,

I don’t have a desk,
fountain pens,

a type-writer,
I don’t have a technique,

I don’t take notes...

“you have just said something
very interesting,

please, let me take it down“.

I could become a writer
with some “inner warmth",

I would write nice books
full of humour and some tears.

If they started to pay me,

to support me,
to pat me on the back,

maybe I would achieve
something in the field.

Yet as the situation here was
different, socialist reality,

they pay the same for anything

and the audience awards almost
the same for anything.

Are you writing anything?

l have just started.

What is this going to be?

Nothing special.

l have just had the idea to write
some nonsense about myself.

You have always written
about yourself.

To success.

Your health.

Shall we sign something?

We would like to make
you an offer.

On behalf of our colleagues.

What offer?

We would like you to set
yourself

- on fire in front of the building...
- Why me?! Why do you come to me?

It makes me wonder what
happened to me.

It seems to me that
I haven’t changed at all.

And yet there are some objective
proofs that l have changed a lot.

I may even be a completely
different person.

It is difficult to talk about it,

a demagogue will immediately
say “he wants to weasel out,

he wants to excuse himself.

He may want to say that he
is not responsible

for the errors of his younger
years or his adult age. “

This isn’t true.
It is an interesting phenomenon

how far one can go in his life.

I am a master of social
intrigue.

| always try to make people
come together in a joyful way.

I want for things to happen,
I don’t want any boredom.

When I stand in a queue

and I turn into an old hag
who will cook her dinner,

and I know it all,
what pasta, what...

When I sit among bitter
intellectuals I also become bitter.

It seems to me that
always try to behave

in such a way as if I did
not exist at all.

As you know I am often
taken for somebody else.

And Who are you?

l have scars on all my body.

One by one, as if my skin
was put on a barbecue.

Maybe death would be better
than this kind of life.

Watch out.

Not a word.

If anything happens
knock thrice.

They won’t take me alive.

Everyone has one special skill.

A circus performer
may do a triple twist somersault

and this is his special skill.
My special skill has been

the ability to cast away any pose,
any falsity immediately.

I can wake up to reality in just
a second and so I wake up.

We are building a new
house for our future,

for better days, Warsaw,

Help us With this task,
share With us this task,

we have a common aim,
Warsaw,

May the construction grows from
its foundation to the roof,

this our common dream,
Warsaw...

Once I had a great passion
for travelling

but I could not travel then.

When I could travel I lost
this passion.

As a man gets older he feels
the best in his own space.

| feel the best in my room
with my cat.

The world gets smaller,

from my point of view Manhattan
or Long Island

are a province of Oszmiana
or Vilnius province.

They are islands off the shore
of this province.

l was very much impressed
by China.

China expanded
my knowledge of art, of man,

of his existence on the Earth.

l was so full of reverence
for this country

and then I took a local train
from Vilnius to Kolonia Wilenska.

I got out and I looked
towards the Wilenka

into the depth of the valley,

and I thought that Kolonia Wilenska
is the most beautiful.

My writing is the best
and easiest

only when I lead my
characters

to places I remember from
my childhood

which I adapt in various ways
to post-war,

contemporary situations. Warsaw is
probably the only exception.

I finally got used to this city,

it became the location for
several of my novels.

It seems to me that
I am extremely sensitive.

I can act like a medium

in responding to national
hysteria or social moods.

I can feel the social
temperature which is to say,

I can tell exactly
when this temperature

is above or below the average,
what is going on.

I can feel something approaching,
I know what it is going to be.

Maybe it is so,

that in Poland miracles
happen when nobody wants them.

They happen in other societies

as well but they think
about their miracles,

they work for it to happen
and it finally comes.

In Poland it is always
the other way round,

miracles happen
when nobody expects them.

My childhood was full
of sun,

full of freedom.

I would spend all days

investigating every nook
and cranny of my small world.

I would come home late
during the summer

to find one of my relatives

already waiting for me
at the garden gate.

When my father died my
mother would lock me up

and leave me at home
and go to work.

l was three and a half years old
at that time.

I remember that it took me many
years to overcome this fear.

I dream that there was just
a chink in the window left for me.

Naturally, when l was twelve
to fifteen years old,

love affairs were the
most important.

I fell for my school-mates
who were all much taller.

I remember how tiresome

it was walking on my tiptoes
to seem a little taller.

When we went for a walk,
six kilometres,

it wasn’t either easy or nice
to walk on tiptoes all the way.

We all have something
that bugs us...

Every man climbs
constantly upwards.

Unless he degrades his
social status.

Going up is a natural tendency.

Naturally, one may say that
there are historic opportunities

as well as social
and political moments

which make such climbing easier.

I certainly used such
a historic opportunity.

War brought with it the fight
but also joy.

We wanted very much to join
the guerrillas.

We wanted to fight

although we were not allowed in
order to take our maturity exams.

We simply ran away and joined
the first guerrilla unit

we could find during the
Vilnius uprising.

We survived the rising,

we experienced the greatness and
the misery of the action Storm...

It did not succeed...

My unit was one of the last
ones to stay and fight.

Just a few boys from
city families.

Brilliant, intelligent boys

who did not fall into
any trap.

They survived until
some girls scouts

got them out of the forest,

convinced them that it made
sense to live on.

There were still many
people fighting for Poland

they imagined during the war.

I am talking about
the resistance now.

The resistance was still strong

and until the very end some of
them were quite desperate.

Actually, I was one of them.

| just managed to escape
the forests a little earlier.

The joy of life was stronger
than any political fierceness.

That was why the
Home Army units

left the forests
and entered the civil life.

Biology, pure vital force.

Just as after a severe winter
all the nature seems to explode

uncontrollably life started

to bloom madly on the ruins
left by the war.

Everyone wanted to
experience life.

I started to write shyly, slowly.

In the beginning it was
some journalism.

Naturally, I wrote some six
poems in my life.

I tried writing reviews
with Mach’s assistance.

My Polish was closer to the
language of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky

at that time than to the language
of Mickiewicz and Kochanowski.

“Nurt” was just about to start.

Borowski and Bratny were
the editors,

they came and said to me —
we need some prose

and we heard that you
write prose.

I wasn’t in the position
to say “no“.

I lived in Bristol Hotel
at that time,

l was transferred with the whole
editorial board to Warsaw.

l locked myself up and
wrote the short story

“Corporal Koziolek and Me".l think
I did it during one weekend.

Ididn’t eat, I didn’t drink,

l sweated with fear,
and I wrote my debut.

I gave in to Marxism for
the simplest reason.

A reason which is obvious
for my generation

but for other generations
is oddly incomprehensible.

It was disappointment caused by
the war my generation had lost.

I joined the party,

I got to like Marxism
I had not known before

and I never gotten to know.
Maybe now I will look something up.

I liked its rationalism.

I could have become a dandy,

slightly offended by reality

but I fell to the very bottom

with the party officials,
with the “sinners“...

I did not write to order.
I wrote what I thought I should.

I believed that once in a lifetime
one can subjugate oneself,

give up purely artistic
ambitions for a cause.

My losses included five failed
or lame, or handicapped books.

I became successful
as a writer

only when I told myself:
“Never again! “

l welcomed 1956
with major reserve.

From my point of view
this catastrophe

was not a simple backward
somersault

to be achieved in just
a few hours.

I did not change overnight.

I had to digest it,
remove the poison from my body.

I could not pretend
I was only naive.

I had made a conscious decision,
a painful decision

which left its traces
in my books.

“Power“ for example, and all the doubts

of an intellectual are all
written down in my books.

I did it as honestly as I could.

I could not just stand up
and say —

well, I am sorry, I was wrong
but now I am a different person.

I felt cheated or rather as
if I participated in a fraud.

But you know already,
I had said that

I cannot find a few pages

or a few takes that I would like
to save from oblivion.

Actually, I don’t know if I would
like to save anything.

I can hardly imagine
that anyone

will be interested in reading
it some years after my death.

| feel like a bankrupt
Babylonian priest.

During the Second World War

all the old artistic canons
were destroyed

as if to take revenge on the
self-assuredness of the old art,

as if to punish its vanity, its
contempt for simple people.

Wonderful talentless
hacks rule the world,

their lack of talent is
liberated and naked.

We should give up any hopes

that there are God given
laws in the arts.

Your noble artistic
standards

which you want to uphold
are provincial and old-fashioned.

Father, we live in days
of great crisis.

Forests die, rivers die,
seas dry up.

People fly to the moon.

People crossed the threshold
of the skies,

they entered another world.

There was terrible scream
like in the tower of Babel.

Thousands of slogans,

thousands of catchy phrases.

They all fly in the air
and nobody knows what is what

but as the smart alecks claim,
nobody knows

what is true because everyone
has their own truth.

However, when you corner

a man he knows what is true
and what is a lie.

Complication is the mother
of simplicity.

What does it mean?

It means only as much.

We seek relief in our suffering,

in our uncertainty,
our fears, our hysteria.

It is strange but
art works as a cure

even though it is a product
of some illness itself.

There are many things that
I admire but I think

that our only real
achievement

is art because art
is a testimony to our presence.

I reached the conclusion
after numerous experiences

that a man who writes

should not be limited by any
form of external discipline.

He should listen only to his
own conscience

and write down his time
as his old-fashioned soul dictates it.

It is better for an artist
not to be a member of anything.

Exactly, this June 22
it was 58 years ago...

and this is something of my
personal boundary.

Tell me exactly the date
and hour of your birth.

- Midnight, June 22.
- I like this constellation.

Cancer in opposition to Venus.

This is not the best moment
of my life.

| feel a need for an internal
change and in what I do.

I want to write a short novel

about supposed life
of my grandmother

about whom I know nothing,

and about the birth
of my father

about whom I also know nothing.
I did not have the time to ask

about him when I still my
relatives around me.

Now that l have the time to ask
them they are mostly dead.

Maybe your mother told you
Who my grandfather was?

A Lithuanian peasant,
a Russian soldier?

A wandering Jewish merchant?

My grandparents had a hard life.

It was full of hard work,
they worked a lot

and had so few pleasures.
Their greatest pleasure was prayer.

I am thinking now that
l have succeeded,

l have gone further,
I have flown further,

lam thinking -

am | happier then they were?
I am not quite sure.

As I say, all this I realise
that this is my long,

great, and very precisely
prepared defence.

I am defending what
I have done,

my gestures, fingers, my eye.

I would like to save many things I did.

Feelings, moods I described, fate of some
generation that I managed to capture,

some landscapes
that existed and passed...

I wanted something...

I wanted something very
important

but I can’t remember
any more.

Maybe you wanted to leave behind
a lasting shape of your life.

There is something
interesting in what I said,

I am sorry I praised myself.

Liar!
He is a liar!

Come on, why don’t you
say something?

A quite important function
of art

is helping our fellow creatures

who also found themselves
in this vale of tears.

Our neighbours suffer the most
because of solitude.

This is the greatest scourge
of our lives.

I think that all loves,
all friendships

are born of this wild,
extreme feeling of solitude.

I want to be a passer-by,
that a man meets in life.

I want to wave at this man,
give him a sign

that there are other people
in the world, that he is not alone.