No end (Polish, 1985)

No End, directed by the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski is set in 1982, when Poland was behind the Iron Curtain.

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The plot

The film revolves around two intersecting strands, one personal and the other political.

The personal strand

The protagonist of the personal strand is Urszula Zyro, aka Ulla (played by Grazyna Szapolowska), whose husband of 11 years, Antek Zyro (played by Jerzy Radziwilowicz) dies untimely of a heart attack. Ulla is devastated, though she confides in Antek's long-time friend Tomek (played by Marek Kondrat) that the couple had grown apart.

Ulla struggles to be fully present for her pre-teen son Jacek (played by Krzysztof Krzeminski) through this difficult time. She seeks solace in a sexual encounter with an American tourist (played by Danny Webb), who mistakes her for a prostitute. She also seeks help, unsuccessfully, from a hypnotist (played by Tadeusz Bradecki). The dénouement of the personal strand is unexpected and disturbing.

The political strand

The protagonist of the political strand of the film is Dariusz (Darek) Stach (played by Artur Barciś), who has been put into jail by the military dictatorship ruling Poland at the time. Darek, who was Antek's client, has been charged with organizing a strike at a factory. His wife Joanna Stach (played by Maria Pakulnis) approaches Ulla for access to Darek's files. Joanna, on Ulla's advice, seeks help from an aging lawyer, Mieczyslaw Labrador (played by Aleksander Bardini), whom Antek had trained under.

Initially, Labrador does not want to assume the personal risk of representing a political prisoner. But the imminent passing of a new law that would put him on the wrong side of a mandatory retirement age, motivates him to take up Darek's cause as his swan song.

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Observations

The iron curtain

Some political context is needed to appreciate the film. After World War 2, Poland was run by a Soviet sponsored puppet government. By the late 1970s, people were facing economic hardship, as one would expect in a state administered economy. The political unrest was led by labor unions, who eventually formed a national organization called Solidarity in September 1980.

On 13th December 1981, the Polish army imposed martial law, which lasted till July 1983. The events of this film occur during this period of martial law. The excuse for imposing martial law: civic and economic breakdown caused by political dissidents, seems identical to the one offered by Indira Gandhi for the declaration of emergency in India. It is fitting with the zeitgeist of that time in Poland that Ulla is translating George Orwell in her professional capacity.

While watching the travails of Darek and his fellow activists, I wondered how they would have reacted if someone told them that within less than a decade, the Berlin Wall would fall, the Soviet Union would collapse and Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, will become President of Poland! Many of us cannot believe that the CCP will be dethroned from China. Yet, bigger changes have happened in the not-so-distant past!

A bitter victory

The generational clash between Labrador, the aging lawyer and Darek, the handsome young prisoner, is beautifully portrayed. Labrador's pragmatic approach clashes with Darek's idealism. The central irony of the film is that when in the end Darek is set free after following Labrador's advice, no one appears more bitter than Labrador himself!

While Darek is consistently respectful towards Labrador, it is clear, right from the beginning, that they are not simpatico. Darek misses Antek, whose strategy was to secure an honorable release for the prisoner, by casting the latter's actions in a noble light, questioning the wisdom of the law itself and making Darek a cause célèbre. Labrador, on the other hand, wants Darek to downplay his role in the strike and plead insanity for certain actions. When he cannot get his client to follow his advice, he gets the new government approved union at Darek's factory to stand bail for the prisoner.

Initially, the old lawyer who has spent his career defending petty criminals, is frustrated with having a client who does not want to be released. However, over time, Darek's idealism makes Labrador realize that while on the surface he was defending individuals all these years, in reality, he had been defending a system of oppression. In the end, Labrador is bitter that his swan song represented the victory of evil over good.

Darek's capitulation

Darek refuses to compromise with the authorities in return for a light sentence and raises the stakes by going on a hunger strike in prison. However, in the end, he capitulates. We can infer three reasons for this volte-face.

First, the physical suffering of hunger. Second, he is increasingly alone in his struggle. His childhood friend, who was a co-organizer of the strike, has capitulated and now heads the government approved union. Third, he had never intended to be a Mandela. Darek admits that the strike he organized was a fight against a localized injustice rather than a nationwide system of oppression. But Antek seems to have had a Pygmalion effect on him.

Darek's capitulation is a grim end to the film's political strand. Kieślowski seems to suggest that there is no hope for Poland. After the acquittal, Labrador recites a poem in the courthouse that captures the hopelessness of the moment. Knowing what we now know about Poland's transition to a prosperous democracy, it is easy for us to forget how grim this ending would have seemed to the audience when the film was released in 1985.

The young and the restless

We can see the restlessness for change among the young men of Poland at the time. In addition to Darek and Antek, another advocate for change is Labrador's young assistant, Mietek (played by Michal Bajor), who advises Darek to not only plead guilty but also declare that the strike was intended to subvert the system.

The sex scene

There is an explicit sex scene between Ulla and an American man she meets at a bar. Its striking feature is the realistic depiction of the banality of sex. Ulla is attracted to the stranger because his hands remind her of Antek. When he offers her a deal for 50 dollars, mistaking her to be a prostitute, Ulla does not disabuse him of his error. She makes minimal eye contact with him during the sex act because for her this man is merely a surrogate for Antek. Her immersive participation is a pleasant surprise to the American, who was probably expecting something more mechanical. He asks her out for dinner but she rushes out, not even aware of the money he slipped into her handbag.

The ghost story

At the beginning of the film, we see Antek walking around the apartment while Ulla and Jacek are asleep. It is with a start that we realize that Antek's figure is a spirit when he starts narrating the story of his own recent death! He describes the post-death experience as one of not wanting to come back. This is how I imagine death to be-like waking up from a dream. It never seems either possible or desirable to get back to even the most vivid and desirable dreams.

At first, Antek's spirit seems like a creative license taken by the filmmaker, extraneous to the main plot. However, several incidents in the film suggest a continuing strand of supernatural influence. For example, a red question mark appears next to Labrador's name in Antek's phone directory. After Jacek assures his mother that he wasn’t responsible, Ulla becomes convinced that Antek is warning her from beyond the grave against involving Labrador. Labrador himself tells Ulla that Antek wouldn't have wanted a status-quoist like him to represent Darek.

Another paranormal incident occurs when Ulla's car breaks down, causing her to stop briefly. A car that overtakes her is then struck by a bus, killing the young driver. The implication is that if Ulla had not stopped, it is her bloodied face we would be seeing instead of the young man's. The car then seems to get fixed by itself, and later, a stray dog known to Antek tries to get into it.

Finally, Darek's wife brings a newspaper to Labrador, featuring a story about Antek's friend becoming a leader in the new, government-approved union. This prompts Labrador to consider whether the new union might support Darek's bail, a move that would be seen favorably by the judges. Strangely, the newspaper disappears without a trace, hinting at Antek disapproval of this cowardly tactic from beyond the grave.

Antek

The film allows us to assemble a fragmented picture of Antek through the memories of those who knew him. There is something unsettling about death: a person is alive one moment and gone the next. Were they ever truly real, or just an illusion? The memories they leave behind are disjointed fragments, like pieces of a puzzle with many missing parts. From these scattered recollections, we learn a few things about Antek. In college, he aspired to be a judge and was an avid reader of Camus. He had a heart condition he confided to a casual girlfriend but never mentioned to Ulla. He never told Ulla that he knew she had modeled nude before they met. He also once sheltered a man wanted by the authorities, risking his own safety.

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I became a fan of Krzysztof Kieślowski after watching the Three Colors trilogy. His films have a calming quality even though the stories are a combination of serious and sad. No End is within that same template.  Krzysztof Kieślowski fans will not be disappointed.