POLISH FILM ACADEMY

Faces of Agnieszka Holland.  Editor: Krystyna Zamysłowska, Mieczysław Kuźmicki, Publisher: Muzeum Kinematografii w Łodzi, 2013

Faces of Agnieszka Holland

Bogusław Linda

Meeting Agnieszka was connected with my role in the play Koczowisko (author Tomasz Łubirński, dir. Tadeusz Minc, Teatr Polski in Wrocław, premier in 1979 – ed.), such a rather pro-Solidarity performance. We went to Warsaw for a theatre festival where I received a prize for my role in this performance. After it ended Wajda and Agnieszka Holland came backstage and Wajda first asked, ‘Where have you been, young man? ‘ And I answered that I was close to where he was the whole time. He was surprised, ‘Then I didn’t know.’ And it seemed as if it was as a result of this conversation that I later played in films. The offers came one after the other: Man of Iron with Wajda, Agnieszka Holland’s Fever and Blind Chance by Krzysztof Kieslowski.

During the realization of Fever by Agnieszka Holland simply put her trust in me. That shows her class as a director, because there are some directors who at all costs try to execute their own will. But then one imagination is not the same as a pair of imaginations. The period of filming Fever was a time when I was looking for a different way of acting. I had a friend in the United States who was just then doing a PH.D. on Witkacy and he talked me into searching for something new. We were then watching some film with Marlon Brando and I thought that perhaps I could act a bit in an American way – that is, not in a theatrical way, as was the custom then here. I remember that the cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was very worried by how I was playing the role. He said, ‘What’s happening? I don’t understand, I don’t know, what’s happening?’ But Agnieszka stood in my defence, ‘Leave him alone. Let him work it out. As far as I’m concerned it’s OK.’ She put her trust in me. And when Jacek viewed the film material he apologized to me because only then it was visible that it was a precise construction. And this is how I built my role in a slightly different way thanks to Agnieszka who is a super sensitive person, but funnily enough, she covers it up with a tough male fist.

Later there was the film Woman Alone although we were then preparing for a completely different film. It was something similar to her later film In Darkness. This was the script by Stefan Stawiński about a boy from the ghetto who was Aryan in appearance whom I was supposed to play and who leads people through the sewers out of the ghetto. Unfortunately, it was rejected because such a film was not well viewed. It was rejected and Agnieszka was thinking about what other film to make. And that is how she came up with the idea of Woman Alone, and she asked me if I would play in it. And at that time I knew this bloke who used to come to fix my TV set. He was the sort of character who never managed to do anything well, he also stuttered and limped. And I saw this man who seemed to lose out on things from the start. And we had this idea together with Agnieszka that we would choose to do things our own way, that is, we totally rejected the theatrical style. Because Agnieszka is very sensitive to truth. That is one of her greatest merits and actors who play in her films have that comfort because she would never pass any screen lies. She is painfully sharp and painfully sincere and tells actors directly when they are lying. Agnieszka does not like one thing on the set: stupidity or amateurishness and that can make her angry.

Recorded and written by: Andrzej B. Czulda, 2013.

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