Looking at the nondescript man sipping coffee in the restaurant, it is difficult to imagine he made “Interrogation” (1981), defiantly critical of the State under the Soviet regime, hid the film's print under snow and tarpaulin. When it was banned under martial law, he was forced to flee to Canada to escape persecution. Eight years later, it was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes, and won the Best Actress Award for Krystyna Janda.
Auteur Ryszard Bugajski was at the Chennai International Film Festival (CIFF) 2009 with “General Nil”, third in his trilogy headed by “Interrogation”. It profiles General Fieldorf, a hero of the Home Army, accepting death rather than turning informer for the repressive Stalinist regime in Poland. No, Bugajski doesn't make “likeable films”. “But some people like my novels,” he laughs.
The man had been unable to make up his mind what he wanted to do — drawing, painting, playing jazz or writing, and studied philosophy by default. By chance, someone gave him a ticket to a movie. When Bugajski came out of Fellini's “8 ½”, he knew he would be a filmmaker.
Training at the Polish Film Institute under Andrei Wajda, Bugajski has emerged as a voice speaking unpleasant, uncompromising truths, mirroring the admirable, vulnerable and shameful sides of human beings.
What specifically attracted you to the story of General Fieldorf, who refused to expose the underground resistance fighters in ‘General Nil'?
Veterans of World War II picked me as the director for ‘General Nil', a top leader of the underground Home Army. I agreed reluctantly.
Reluctantly?
Don't want to be pigeonholed. In Poland, it's difficult to escape history. Partitioned between many countries in the 18th century, there was no Poland for 150 years. After World War I, our brief freedom was destroyed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet take over. When the British ruled India, you could spot the tyrants. But in Poland, KGB agents looked just like us, even wore Polish uniforms. The occupation was hidden. Thousands were tortured and executed before Poland became a democracy 20 years ago.
What makes you look at both sides — moral courage and the lack of it?
Every family in Poland has its victims. My father was an Auschwitz survivor. But, the traitors are also part of our own community. One of the judges in ‘General Nil', who did not have the guts to stand up for his principles, was the father of a close friend of mine. The daughter of the Russian embassy official who insists: ‘You must be tough or power will be taken away from you”, is my friend's fiancée. The enemy was not an unknown face, every family had an informer. We have to face our past, acknowledge who we are, and what we were. The wound has healed, but the scabs are there, itching, and we scratch all the time!
So, is your trilogy really about forgiving others and forgiving oneself?
Yes.
Almost all East European films are dark and sombre, comedy is invariably satire, and entertainment is political lampooning. Does this make Polish cinema difficult to be accepted across the world?
You're right. After the 1950s, Andrei Wajda's films about war could be recognised in Cannes and Venice as the common experience of the post-war turmoil. But, now you must know details of Polish history to follow our current films. We are out of sync with the universal, out of the loop, or in the same loop for too long. We must get out.
Don't be so tough on yourself! Everyone understands oppression, torture, courage, survival. Especially in ‘Interrogation', where an empty-headed, happy-go-lucky woman is suddenly yanked into police custody, and subjected to ruthless questioning. Did you make this film as a metaphor of our times where safety and security are myths of a lost innocence?
That's an interesting idea, but, no, I merely repeated the formula from my first film ‘A Woman on a Woman', where a friendship is torn apart by moral issues. I brought it to India 27 years ago. In contemporary society, women have a more diverse role than men. The woman in ‘Interrogation' could go through a vaster range of reactions than a man — laugh, flirt, cry, faint… before loyalty takes over, and her conscience and character grow before your eyes.
I wanted to show how everybody has decency, loyalty, love for others, more important than any political ideology. People in countries as far apart as Taiwan and the U.S. saw themselves in ‘Interrogation'.
A white liberal leftist lawyer supports native land claims in Canada in ‘Clear Cut' (1991), only to find the natives suspicious of his motives. Why did you opt for the surreal here, and so much violence?
A figure from Indian mythology takes the lawyer into the primeval forests, which is really an inward journey into his own unconscious. He uses violence to make the lawyer understand that over-simplified pacifism doesn't always work. Many didn't recognise the surreal, but saw it as merely an action movie!
Why does a Polish director go for native mythology, and to another continent altogether?
To get away from East European problems.
Next project?
About ‘Sat-Okh, The Long Quill', the Polish-Canadian Indian who escaped from the train to Auschwitz, joined the resistance, and was drafted into the army after the war. He became a writer of adventure stories for adolescents!
