Katarzyna Taras
Socially engaged cinema and spectacles

This year's Main Competition is dominated by films which move and shake out of the state of complacency because they prove that there is so much to be done, that still a lot of traumas have to be dealt with. I like socially engaged cinema - provoking, irritating, exposing uncomfortable truths, flourishing from inspiration with true stories, and this is what this year's Main Competition (in large portion) is going to be like.

I have the impression that one of the American society's traumas is slavery. Twelve Years a Slave (cin. Sean Bobbitt, dir. Steve McQueen), an adaptation of Solomon Northup's memories, is a story of a man, who, once a free citizen, became a slave only because of his skin colour, a story of a paid in blood rebellion against reification. Shame, presented at Camerimage 2011, stunned with non-intrusive references - both when it comes to colouring and frame composition - to Edward Hopper's paintings, inseparable from the story about loneliness and inability to establish unbusinesslike relations. This time Sean Bobbitt, who often works as a cameraman in his films, as he likes to be close to an actor, likes to see them (according to what he told me in the interview in 2011), decided to influence viewers with the length of shots and ... darkness, and in this way he tested sensitivity and perception of people faithful to McQueen's cinema.

Still from "Twelve Years a Slave"
In turn, Agnieszka Holland in Burning Bush (cin. <b.Martin Strba) reminded of, or even introduced into public discourse, a character of 21-year-old Jan Palach, who committed suicide by self-immolation at Wenceslas Square in Prague in January 1969 as a protest against intervention in Czechoslovakia. This film attracts with the temperature and sincerity of its message - and this is what good cinema is all about. Martin Strba's cinematography does not eclipse the plot, it does not seduce with mastery, as such act would be unacceptable in a tale like that - it only (or so much) serves the story, it is perfectly transparent.

Ida is another film inspired by authentic people's lots. Paweł Pawlikowski brought into existence the female characters of Wanda (Agata Kulesza) and Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska) referring to the biography of a nice old lady, whom he had an occasion to meet, and who had used to be one of the most cruel Polish prosecutors during Stalinism, and to the experience of a Catholic priest who, having been a Jewish child, survived from a Holocaust train. It is tempting to interpret this film as a fable - which solution is also suggested by precisely composed frames, too excellent for a story about the past as they are unrealistically ideal. (The fable trail is also confirmed by the ending of this film). Each fable is an initiation story and this one is all about initiation, and maybe also about identity and free choice of who one wants to be. It needs to be underlined that cinematography to this quiet, non-intrusive, though deeply instilling film was created by two cinematographers, Ryszard Lenczewski and Łukasz Żal (so far he has worked on, among others, Aneta Kopacz'sJoanna, and Piotr Bernaś'Paparazzi), who at some point had to replace the artist associated with cinematography to Andrzej Barański'sWoman from the Provinces and Two Moons.

Still from "Ida"
Also Maciej Pieprzyca'sLife Feels Good followed from an authentic story of Przemek who suffers from cerebral palsy. I was afraid of that film but luckily, instead of sentimentality and excessive emotions, I received a serene tale. Paweł Dyllus' cinematography is extremely mature, it seduces with tranquility which allows a viewer of this intensive story to catch a breath. There is no hysteria or emotional blackmail, what is most important happens in the viewer. Paweł Dyllus rather suggests than visualizes, he is aware that moderation is art. The most brutal scene is silent. I read this film through a shot which for me constitutes a metaphor of Mateusz' (Dawid Ogrodnik) fate, a signal to this whole production - through the image of dust under the sofa. It is not a challenge to film in an interesting and attractive way something that is inherently attractive, but to endow dust with - attention, big word - a soul ... Chapeau bas!

Finally, Home from Home. Chronicle of a Vision (cin. Gernot Roll, dir. Edgar Reitz), sadly such an up-to-date (although with historical decorations) and fickle story about overseas emigration to earn one's bread, experienced by many Europeans in the 19th century; and Lee Daniels': The Butler (cin. Andrew Dunn, dir. Lee Daniels), with the history of the United States told from a perspective of a butler who served eight presidents, a film inspired by a real person - a servant who worked in the White House from Truman to Reagan's tenure. If we recollect the fact that Andrew Dunn is a cinematographer behind, among others, Gosford Park (2001), we can be sure that there will be style and elegance, but never boredom.

The characteristic feature of films deriving from the Latin American culture is the intensity of a message, and so it is in Heli (cin. Lorenzo Hagerman, dir. Amat Escalante) and in Paradise for the Damned (cin. Sol Lopatin, dir. Alejandro Montiel). The former, a story of a dysfunctional infatuation between a slow-witted policeman and a 12-year-old girl, will surely provoke a discussion whether violence is still/only the artistic means; it will also bring back the question about a viewer's sensitivity. The latter, a slightly more complicated and universal film, is a story of the desire for living in illusion at any price, of the need for having a saving myth, so indispensible, as it turns out, in every latitude and regardless of the profession.

Still from "Paradise of the Damned"
If viewers feel tired of “socially engaged cinema" - because there is either violence or economic emigration, disease or crime from the past, slavery or regime, fight for human rights or the Vietnam War - they will be able to relax watching the spectacles, which also found their place is the Main Competition. Such a spectacle is Mary Queen of Scots (dir. Thomas Imbach, cin. Rainer Klausmann), an adaptation of Stefan Zweig's biographical essay, in which we will admire how the times of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were portrayed by a cinematographer behind already cult (and so outstanding) Scream of Stone directed by Werner Herzog. I wonder to what extent this vision will be different from Philippe Rousselot's in Queen Margot by Patrice Chereau (1994), Remi Adefarasin's in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) by Shekhar Kapur, and Bruno de Keyzer's in The Princess of Montpensier by Bertrand Tavernier (2010) - why, they are all about the same period. Diametrically different from Mary... is Rush (cin. Anthony Dod Mantle, dir. Ron Howard), a spectacle (I chose this name intentionally), stunning with the number of formats used, about rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. One will be able to have a rest watching Shirley. Visions of Reality (cin. <b.Jerzy Palacz, dir. <b.Gustav Deutsch), a film inspired by works of Edward Hopper (mentioned at the beginning of this essay), who constitutes a proof of Greenaway's thesis that film is yet another phase in the development of paintings. One will be able to calm down watching Concrete Night (cin. Peter Flinckenberg, dir. Pirjo Hankesale), where black and white serve as a counterpoint for another initiation story, cool off a tale of two brothers and their mother who can handle neither her sons nor the fleeting femininity. One will be able to give in to perverse magic by Bruno Delbonnel, who, together with the Coen brothers, created a musical spectacle Inside Llewyn Davis.

Still from "Mary Queen of Scots"
Finally, a remarkable, as befits director Alexander Payne, story about old age, fatherhood, sonship and family, that is Nebraska with the cinematography created by Phedon Papamichael, whose artistic output serves as a proof, that maybe there is no such thing as “a cinematographer's style"; as how can one compare what he did in supersensual Million Dollar Hotel by Wenders, with cinematography as simple as “the first love", to an ethereal and unpretentious film about ... the first love, that is to 27 Missing Kisses by Nana Dzhordzhadze?