Iluminacja (1973)

Title and Date: Iluminacja (Illumination) (1973) IMDb Rating: 7.8/10 (107 votes) Runtime: 87 min Language: Polish Country: Poland Color: Color IMDb URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070217/ Director: Krzysztof Zanussi Cast: Stanislaw Latallo ... Franciszek Retman Malgorzata Pritulak ... Malgorzata Monika Dzienisiewicz-Olbrychska ... Agnieszka Edward Zebrowski ... Physician Jan Skotnicki ... Chory Anna Horecka ... Matka Chorego Jadwiga Colonna-Walewska ... Franciszek's Mother Wlodzimierz Zonn ... Dean Wlodzimierz Zawadzki ... Assistant a.o. Description: Whilst Polish cinema is best known internationally for names such as Oscar-winning in Andrzej Wajda and the currently fashionable Krzysztof Kieslowski, one of the most important names in the country's film history Krzysztof Zanussi is less well-known to international audiences. This is despite the fact that he was a pioneer of the famous kino moralnego niepokoju (cinema of moral concern) trend in Polish cinema in the 1970s and early 80s. Ron Breznay, Kinoeye, September 2000 Zanussi's film "Iluminacja" follows its questing hero, a physics student, through his twenties. A meditation on the human condition, its title is taken from medieval philosophy. The hero's development is episodic and familiar: student days, first sexual encounter, the death of a friend, a marriage that falters and recovers, economic security a development marked by the gradual abandoning of his search for absolutes. With maturity comes a limiting of horizons and the beginning of decline. The film's depth and individual perception stem from its background of physics, mathematics and medicine, which transforms it into an objective look at the human species. The rapid editing and self-conscious technique is sometimes irritating, but more often proves sufficiently provocative to hold attention. Time Out Film Guide Writer-director Krzysztof Zanussis early "Iluminacja" is autobiographical. Its protagonist, Franciszek Retman, is a graduate student in physics because he wants to know, he tells the university interviewing board, things that are certain, unequivocal. Zanussi himself studied physics at the University of Warsaw. But things changed for him. He proceeded to loftier intellectual ground, studying philosophy at the University of Krakw. Finally, he studied film at the Ld Film School and became Polands greatest filmmaker. His illumination, the wisdom he attained as an enlightenment of the mind (St. Augustine), required the redirection of the course of his life. We see this reflected in Retmans experience. I do not know, however, whether Zanussi suffers (or suffered) any such serious heart disease as afflicts Retman. Indeed, the disease may be metaphorical, an index of awareness of vulnerability that comes from knowing that important, human things are not certain, unequivocal. The two principal events that transform Retman are a turbulent romantic relationship and the death of a friend during their mountain-climb. But something else floats in and about: the responsibility of scientists that they are loath to embrace. Zanussi has stated: The scientist is more interesting than anyone else as he is more responsible for the world than the usual people one finds in movies. Yet early on Retman remarks, I dont feel responsible for the A-

bomb, on the ridiculous grounds that he hadnt participated in its invention. Another student, though, wins their argument by exposing Retmans evasiveness, self-absorption, self-delusion: But [the inventors] were physicists, too. Retmans journey, then, is in the direction of responsibility. Those who climb mountains, as Zanussis masterpiece, "Constans" (1980), reminds us, must return to earth, one way or the other. Most decisive for the brilliance of Zanussis "Illumination" is the form he has given it. Its a mosaic, a kaleidoscope of pieces in which one set of snippets of film sometimes is interrupted by another set of snippets. This piecing together opposes viewer complacency so that even those of us who are intellectually inferior to Zanussi and that includes all but one person Ive known or met, Ren Girard are compelled to approach his film in an intelligent, mentally active way. One cannot go with the flow when there is no flow. Zanussi was at the christological age when he made this terrific movie when a boy (according to Christian myth) becomes a man. "Illumination" is full of wit. At one point Retman interrupts his contemplation of cosmos to have his palm read. His motive is devious: he is curious to see how inaccurate the palm reader will prove herself! She tells him that he doesnt like himself. She is saying this to a most self-satisfied creature. But, of course, Zanussis prick of wit eventually turns around and aims itself at the boy, whose self-satisfaction has been an evasion, a delusion. Hacks do not spare others. Artists do not spare themselves. Dennis Grunes

Zanussi's "Iluminacja" belongs to the very films appreciated by Susan Sontag. Within a program curated by herself ("a selection of my favorite films to be shown at my favorite theatre"), it was screened at the infamous Arsenal movie theatre in Berlin in 1990, next to films by Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Ackermann, Ozu, Tarr, Renoir...