Krzysztof Gierat: Does "Icon" close your Russian trilogy?
Wojciech Kasperski: From the start, I wanted to make 3 films that would show the country from my perspective. I was interested in outcasts, people who live on the fringes of society, but still maintain their independence. People in the remote, unknown Siberia. I wanted to report about them. I was a pioneer, discovering unknown tribes, touching upon something that often vanishes in the presence of a film camera.
But why Russia?
It was a coincidence. I opened an email from producer Krzysztof Kopczyński saying: we are sending Polish filmmakers East, and receiving Russian filmmakers in Poland. As part of the Russia–Poland. New Gaze project. Two years of work brought 10 films, including The Seeds. The seeds were cast… It turned out that the experience lived by my protagonists, while exotic, may also be universal. They were completely removed from my world and culturally alien to me, but they became close to me, and thanks to my film they are also becoming close to the audiences around the world. I received a letter from an American lady saying that she reconciled with her mother after watching the film! Costumes and scenography may change, but people are the same everywhere: they share the same fate, the same feelings, the same longing. Only there, in Siberia, those are more pronounced. People are closer to each other. They have better insight into each other.
Does a filmmaker need any specific character traits to make people trust him?
I went to a small village north of Irkutsk. There were no tourists there, no one. Then a strange guy with a film camera arrives and stays for months. It was important to them that I didn’t just drop in for 10 minutes; I would come in the morning and at night, they were sharing their problems with me, they felt appreciated. Trust requires time.
When you talk about the lives of your protagonists, you talk about sin, passion, gold fever and madness.
When I go out on filming, I don’t expect anything spectacular to happen, I don’t have a detailed script. Rather, I make someassumptions. On site, it turns out that reality goes beyond my preconceived notions, the protagonists are unpredictable. So we strike the iron while it’s hot; when we talk with people, emotions come to surface; we touch upon many things, some of them fundamental.
All your films are consistent in their own way. Each has a guide that shows us around ‘his’ land. All were edited by the same person; however, camera operators change, and so does their point of view.
Any camera operator to accompany me must be visiting Russia for the first time and cannot know the Russian language: theseare my prerequisites. This way, they are absolutely in awe with a completely different world, different colours. And since they don’t speak the language, they follow emotions. While filming The Seeds I noticed that Szymon Lenkowski was indirectly becoming one of the protagonists of the film. Radek Ładczuk’s fear during the shooting of Chasm on the Kolyma, where we often found ourselves in physical danger, is palpable in the film. When we were filming Icon, I would see genuine emotional reactions in Łukasz Żal. The camera operator’s role is extremely important; he is the one portraying the world depicted in the film, and since he is freshly immersed in a new context, a new situation, he focuses on what is essential.
Even when your films show incredible landscapes, they stay very close to the protagonists. The camera approaches them at an arm’s length, as if they allowed you unlimited physical access.
We try to build a relationship from the start. I’m not telling my own story, I am a chronicler telling theirs. I don’t chase them or stalk them. Before we start filming, we meet, sit down, talk. For the first week, we put the camera aside and we never turn it on. It’s not necessary. Once the protagonists start trusting us, we accustom them to the camera’s presence; we film everyday activities like washing your hands or going to the woods. Then we watch the material together, and once they accept our intentions, we start filming. Filming always takes a long time, at least one month. We watch the material as we film. All this is intuitive. Logical development and narrative strands are added at editing stage. I’ve always worked with my editor Tymek Wiskirski, whom I consider indispensable. We understand each other without word, but he always judges harshly the material that I bring. He always asks me ‘but why are we doing this?’. I must know the answer.
The first two parts of the trilogy were filmed mostly outside; in "Icon", you go inside, also inside people, who are patients in a psychiatric hospital.
I wanted to make a film about a doctor facing extreme circumstances. He has a patient who cannot be cured. This was the initial idea. I found oncology wards, wards for soldiers suffering from PTSD, and psychiatric hospitals. We made a list and we went to Russia for documentation. Finally, we arrived at the hospital shown in the film, and we instantly knew that it was the one. Everybody, the whole crew. After 5 minutes there we were sure. The place has a strange aura. An enormous, partly burnt down building, with hundreds of patients and no doctors in sight. The building stands in the middle of the Siberian taiga, circled by a collapsing fence. At the very end of the world. A doctor greets us saying that he is the hospital’s director and today is the 45th anniversary of the beginning of his work there – ‘my wife and I are having a celebration dinner, please come’. He tells us about his first day of work, straight out of the university. During his rounds one of the patients climbed a chimney stack, so he started bringing mattresses to save this man, but he was too late. He would remember that patient’s name until the end of his life. This was our first day.
But you resisted the temptation to tell a few dramatic stories that would be appealing and look good on screen.
We didn’t go that way, because we felt completely lost in that reality, among those people. We were in a state of permanent ambivalence. We had doubts about whether those people were being treated properly, or whether we were witnessing something appalling.
Like in the communist era. There were books written and films made about it.
Especially when the doctor was telling us how when he started his career, they were still performing lobotomy. Shock therapy is still in use. We focused on bridging the gap between us and the patients. These people are practically incapacitated; in theory they are patients, but nobody really cares about them. Because when there are 5 doctors for one thousand patients, they get examined once a year or less. Being a patient in this hospital is a life sentence, like prison. This institution is a hospital in theory only; it’s a social dump for elderly Alzheimer sufferers, teenagers for whom there was no room in reformatories or orphanages, schizophrenics, but also criminally insane, like the woman who was a serial killer. All have been thrown into the same category, and all receive the same medication. I wanted to show that subjective perception of the world exists, that each person has his or her own truth.
They had to accept you and your crew. You were strangers in their community. Didn’t you feel like intruders?
We were strangers, but we were never intruders. I do my best to avoid making people feel like I’m barging into their world uninvited. Whenever I feel that something is not right, I leave first, before I am told to. There, we were welcome; we were a breath of freedom, even for the staff. In every ward, everyone tried to assist us. We spent there 2 months, and during this time only one patient received a visit. But we came every day and listened to them. We became their confidants, and intermediaries when then needed something from the staff.
How much material did you film?
180 hours, based on which we made the film, 10 months of editing and many different versions later. The longest version was 2 hours 10 minutes long, the shortest had 40 minutes.
So two years ago, when you were collecting an HBO Development Award for best project at the Dragon Forum at the Krakow Film Festival, you had already finished filming?
Yes, completely. In total, it took 10 years of work. Research and preparation in 2007, filming in 2011, editing in 2012‑2013, and post‑production since 2014.
You mentioned earlier that you start by getting to know place and people. Was it the same in this case?
Yes, everyday we accompanied the doctor on his rounds. The patients often provoked him, taking advantage of our presence. They would say – ‘Why are you poisoning us?’ ‘Why can’t I have my favourite cassette?’ Sometimes, the doctor would find himself in a difficult position, because they would accuse him of unbelievable, untrue things. This was what broke a certain taboo between us, the doctors, and the patients. Everyone understood that we didn’t come to make a sensational story about how much those people were being degraded. After a few days, we were walking around like we were members of personnel. Taking coffee with nurses was a morning ritual.
At first, the doctor was to supposed to be the main protagonist, but during filming you also picked out other characters.
We already knew then that we wanted to follow several characters. I had ideas for several intertwining threads. During editing, I focused on a collective portrait, with the doctor being a frame encompassing the whole, and leaving as much space as possible for interpretation. I wanted the film to be coherent, universal, and I wanted it to bring people together rather than apart.
Once again, the camera comes very close to the protagonists,
but without giving an impression that boundaries
were crossed. You treat your protagonists with gentleness.
The camera is a teddy bear to be hugged, and not an aggressor. I found the idea of filming through glass windows and metal bars very meaningful: it makes us realise that despite certain proximity, we can never completely break through in our understanding of another person.
There is this story that I take very personally. When white colonists were conquering Africa and taking photos of local tribesmen, the locals believed that they were stealing their souls. I believe it. If you don’t want to steal someone’s soul, you must film only your own tribe. The people in my film are my tribe. I filmpeople with whom I identify, who I understand. I’m not filming animals in a zoo. They are not strangers to me. They know that I won’t hurt them, that I am with them. It’s not a contract. It’s some kind of non‑verbal message.
I know the moment when the contract takes effect, and only then do I start filming. Is the doctor like this, too? Do you see him this way?
Doctor Maslov has an extraordinary trait: he doesn’t judge by appearances. He sees two layers in his patients. One is the superficial one; the other is the one that lies behind those bars, behind this barrier. This may sound awfully clichéd, but inside, we all are a piece of the same continent. I think it’s what Hemingway wrote in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
It’s a very important message in the light of what is happening now in the world, the mistrust and even fear of those that are different, strange.
Or just a different point of view. I have a different perspective than most people I meet, we are simply different. But we do have a lot in common. We have a certain lifetime, we have parents, we have our needs, we all want to have family, friends. We are flawed; we are mortal.
Would you be offended if someone were to interpret your film as a metaphore of Russia with Putin as the good doctor keeping everyone under lock and key?
It never occurred to me, but Maslov does share certain traits with the Russian president: he is fit, he rules them all with an iron hand. Any interpretation is allowed.
My question was teasing, because the Russians often say that when we make films about their country, we always show social outcasts and landfills, and that Western media love to turn everything into politics.
From my perspective, I’m not making films about Russia. I call them Russian films because this is where they are set. I always film ‘my people’, my flock, even if it were in Brazil. I never see my creative work in social terms; my films are very impressionistic. If I were to make a film about Russia as a country, I would do it differently. My films to date are not a diagnosis of the Russian society.
Your film could also be interpreted from the point of view of the esoteric, the inscrutable.
This film was psychologically a very hard experience for us; we were so exhausted after filming that we went to the Baikal and we shut ourselves in a monastery. After returning to Poland, everyone focused on his own plans. Right after this film, Łukasz Żal filmed "Ida" (nominated to the Academy Award for Best Cinematography – editorial note). I wrote a script for my debut fiction film, not to mention that 9 months later my daughter was born. For me, this film is very personal, and I would very much like for it to be important for the audience.
Have you though about showing the film to them, to your tribe?
We arranged that I would send over a copy so they could watch it together. It’s going to be an interesting experience. This film is important to them, because it’s about them: unwanted by their families, by the society. I know how much it means to them.
source: "Focus on Poland" Magazine 3 (1/2016)