Anguish seeps in every shot of famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda's new film "Sweet Rush". The film opens on a rushing river, the water glittering in the sun, then shifts to a distraught woman in a bare hotel room, speaking with jittery hand motions about her husband's last painful months of illness. It turns out that the woman -- celebrated Polish actress Krystyna Janda -- is speaking about her real life, off-set: her husband actually died while Wadja was preparing for his new movie, and Wadja subsequently decided to incorporate her authentic reflections into his fiction script.
The script, based on a story by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, is layered with death as well: a woman Marta (Janda) is faced with a fatal illness. Unaware of her impending death, she is nonetheless stricken with a sense of mortality. Not only is she attracted to the locked room of her two sons -- both killed in the Warsaw uprising -- but she sits in melancholy with a friend at a riverside cafe, before a twilit stone castle, watching young people dance about with vibrant and sexual energy: a contrast between age and youth that strikes the audience as well. The message is gentle, as gentle as the scenes of relaxing green water and the easy pace of the two friends as they stroll along the cobblestones at river's edge.
"Life turns into death so easily," one friend says.
The movie maintains this rhythmic shift between poetic melancholy and sharp pain throughout, shifting back and forth between Janda playing herself as widow and Janda playing the dying Marta until the two stories crystallize into one paean to loss: the loss of youth, the loss of one's husband, the loss of children and, eventually, the loss of one's own life.
Yet hope springs eternal. Midway in the film, Marta is awakened to a new possibility: a young man all for herself. "Everything breathes!" she says in an ecstatic rush, smelling the new grass and opening her arms to the burgeoning summer -- and to the young man.
A hope only to be interrupted by both a real and fictional crisis, simultaneous at river's edge, the sun alight in the current. One cannot escape loss, despite the second chances of young men: a sweet echo of the inexorable repetition of pain of Hitchcock's Vertigo.
The film is beautifully shot and its original rhythm -- its shifts between registers and stories -- uneasily memorable. A "sweet rush", we learn, is a river weed that has two scents: the perfume of an "oriental balm" as well as the morbid smell of mold.
Andrzej Wajda comments:
This movie is a fiction script, based on Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz's novella, which gets interrupted by Janda's real-life story. What was the original idea of the movie before you had this inspiration?
This film was always meant to consist of two parts: one part story, one fictive story about actors -- one actor's fictionalized private life. The short story would only take about forty minutes to film so I was looking for other pieces I could include in this film. Then Janda came to me unexpectedly with a script she had written in the night. It is Janda who is sharing memories with us. She is one of us, one of the crew.
How is this story about Janda's loss also personal to you?
Edward Klosinski, her husband, was also my friend. There are many intimate moments in the storytelling: I think Janda wouldn't have been able to tell this story to anyone else, except to my camera. No, it is not my personal story. I wanted to keep the images of the original short story. What I found extraordinary in the short story is the portrait of a woman that was big enough for Janda.
Why did you take a break from your typically political films about Poland's recent history?
I was a senator for three years in the free Poland after the communist regime was finished, but since then, I have left the political subject because I am not particularly interested in it anymore. I strongly believe that democracy needs time, and there is a certain education of the society that is necessary, and it is impossible to speed it up.
What for you is the main challenge for a film director?
I think the most important thing in a film is finding what the film is going to be based on, the screenplay, and then to find the actors that are going to play the roles. I like finding new talents, new faces for the roles. I was very pleased to having Pawel Szajda play this complex role of the young man in my film. What was very charming is that he came from America. Tatarak takes place right after the war, and Pawel seemed to be an American from right after the war. Here in Poland, we have a feeling that everything that comes from America is very energetic and very new.
What specific challenges did you have on this film?
The greatest challenge was the setting. It was clear that we needed different specific settings for the film, first, for the film crew that is permanently on the move. And there had to be a completely different setting for Janda telling her story. The camera operator helped me with this latter problematic. He suggested that we give her freedom with her space, in her room. We left it up to her how much of her face she wants to show. It was her story, and up to her how to express it. I didn't want to impose on Janda, which is why I left her by herself. In general, I think it is important for actors to have a certain freedom from the director.
What is interesting in this film is the fluid border between fiction and reality.
I have the impression that cinema is tending to go in that direction, combining reality with fiction, and I think this is an important tendency. I am going to work on a new film about Lech Walesa and this is the method I want to use in this film. To use real materials about him when he was political and merge them with fictional pieces.
Why do you show your face in this film?
I show my face to indicate that this is my film and I am taking responsibility for it.
Can you comment on the symbolism of the river?
The film starts with a shot of a very big river. It doesn't care about human time; it doesn't mind if political eras change, whether people die or not, it keeps flowing. It is something that keeps going no matter what.