In intensely harrowing 'Afterimage,' Stalinist repression shatters artist鈥檚 life
The Polish avant-garde painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, whose life was shattered by Stalinist repression, is the subject of Andrzej Wajda鈥檚 final film, 鈥淎fterimage.鈥� (The director died last year at the age of 90.) It鈥檚 intensely harrowing 鈥� a fitting coda to the career of a director whose own work often clashed with Communist ideology.聽
Strzeminski, as portrayed by Wajda鈥檚 longtime actor Boguslaw Linda in a magisterial performance, lost a leg and arm fighting in World War I, and yet his passion for the transformative powers of art makes him whole. His injuries are merely a nuisance to be endured.聽
The dictates of the Communist Party in Lodz, Poland, where he cofounded the art school where we first see him teaching in 1948, are another impediment he attempts to brush aside. But although he is a revered figure in the Polish art community, with a classroom packed with adoring students, his painterly abstractions are toxic to the Communist authorities, who castigate as capitalist decadence all art that is not uplifting social realism.聽
There is a remarkable sequence early on in 鈥淎fterimage鈥� that captures with comic horror Strzeminski鈥檚 impending martyrdom. While he is painting alone in his study, the room is suddenly bathed in red light. It takes him a moment to realize the reason: a bright red banner of Stalin unfurled outside his window during a parade. With calm deliberation, he opens the window and jabs a hole in the banner to let the light in. This, of course, brings the authorities to bear on him. 鈥淵ou are at a crossroads,鈥� an official tells him. He is instructed that if he does not conform, 鈥測ou bring that fate upon yourself.鈥�
It is both Strzeminski鈥檚 glory and tragedy that he is not capable of revising his fate. His stand against the Communist authorities goes way beyond simple pride. To comply with the state鈥檚 demands for social realist art that is synonymous with propagandistic kitsch would be for him a violation of nature itself.
Strzeminski, as Linda plays him, has the obsessive insularity of someone who has little need for the comforts of companionship. He is estranged from his wife, the celebrated sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (Aleksandra Justa); their teenage daughter, Nika (Bronislawa Zamachowska), shuttles between the homes of both parents. When she goes to live with him after her mother鈥檚 death, he is so peremptory that she retreats to a children鈥檚 home. He comprehends her dutifulness and her entreaties to take better care of himself, but he doesn鈥檛 have the mettle to abide her for long. 鈥淪he will have a hard life,鈥� he says sadly after she leaves. (She departs stoically but then we see her crying in the street as she flees.) It鈥檚 the closest thing to a benediction he utters in the entire movie.
Wajda and Linda refuse to sentimentalize Strzeminski鈥檚 plight. If, as a smitten student says, he is a 鈥減rophet,鈥� he is a self-
immolating one. And yet we understand that his capitulation to the authorities would be an even greater calamity. This almost happens. Barred by the Workers Party from buying art supplies, or even food, he refuses a deal with the bureaucrats to renounce his beliefs and then, in desperation, scrounges a low-level warehouse job painting heroic posters of Stalin. But his insubordinate past catches up with him. His last job, before he dies from tuberculosis, is dressing mannequins in a store window.聽
The irony of 鈥淎fterimage鈥� is that it champions an avant-garde artist, warts and all, and yet Wajda鈥檚 stylistics here are conventional and understated. His movies (including the celebrated 鈥淢an of Marble鈥� and 鈥淢an of Iron鈥�) have often been bulky and jampacked. By comparison, 鈥淎fter-
image鈥� is devastatingly concise. Each fresh outrage perpetrated against Strzeminski is recorded with a thudding finality. The enclosing trap set by the state has a sickening inevitability. Wajda brings such a controlled fervor to this portrait because it鈥檚 clear that, like Strzeminski, he identifies as a dissident in dangerous times.
The final films of famous filmmakers are often misguidedly referred to as swan songs, as if the directors knew this film would be their last and so put everything of themselves into it. Alas, the movie business does not often accommodate such tidy closures, but I can think of a few examples 鈥� John Huston鈥檚 鈥淭he Dead鈥� is a prime candidate 鈥� in which a director鈥檚 final film was indeed, consciously or not, a kind of spiritual summation. And so it is with 鈥淎fterimage,鈥� a movie about a man whose fate stands as a condemnation of so much that is abhorrent in the wider world. Grade: A (This movie is not rated.)
