KIEŚLOWSKI’S ALTERNATE UNIVERSES

By Raymond Benson

The late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski often dramatized the theme of one’s destiny—whether it be determined by fate or by random coincidences. His most well known work, the Three Colors trilogy (Blue, White, and Red), certainly deals with the subject of chance, as do several episodes of his celebrated television miniseries, The Decalogue.

Made in 1981 during the Solidarity movement and a time of political upheaval in Soviet-occupied Poland, Blind Chance explores the question of “what if?” If you did something as insignificant as bumping into another person, would that change the course of your life?

The film offers three alternate “lives” of a medical student named Witek (superbly played by Boguslaw Linda). The first five minutes provide us with brief glances of Witek as a child, a teenager, and then a young adult. After the death of his father, Witek decides to drop out of medical school and travel to Warsaw to visit his aunt. He is late to the station and must run through a crowd of people to catch the train. What happens on the platform is the pivotal catalyst for the rest of the story. He almost collides with a drunk—but doesn’t touch him—giving Witek that extra second or two that allows him to catch the train. While onboard, he meets an elderly Party-line Communist who takes a fancy to Witek and offers him a job in the city. So, in this lifeline, Witek becomes a Communist and works in opposition to the young people of his age group who are protesting the government.

In an alternate scenario, though, Witek actually collides with the drunk, but the man with the beer remains standing. This causes Witek enough of a delay that he misses the train. He then gets into a scuffle on the platform with a police officer and is arrested. Once Witek is back on the street, he is forever prejudiced against the Communist government. Thus, in this life he becomes an anti-Soviet activist and a practicing Catholic.

Finally, in a third possibility, which may be what really happened, Witek accidentally knocks down the drunk—delaying the young man a few seconds longer—so that Witek not only misses the train, but he avoids the policeman on the platform. Instead, he runs into a female medical student colleague. She persuades him to stay and return to his studies. Witek marries the girl, has children, becomes a successful doctor, and remains apolitical. Witek lives a happy life—until Kieślowski pulls the rug out from under us and delivers a knife wound of an ending.

The picture might remind viewers of Peter Howitt’s 1998 British film Sliding Doors, which also examined alternate life paths—but only two. Blind Chance does it with three, and the movie was made more than fifteen years earlier.

The task of editing such a story is, of course, challenging, and editor Elzbieta Kurkowska deserves special praise for keeping the complex narrative comprehensible. In a 2003 interview, filmmaker and Kieślowski associate Agnieszka Holland explains that she had seen the first cut of the film, which was initially too confusing and didn’t work. Kieślowski made a thorough assessment of what had gone wrong and completely recut the picture with Kurkowska—resulting in the brilliant piece of work presented here.

If you can get past the heavy political discourse that is an integral part of the story, you will find Blind Chance to be a fascinating and intelligent scrutiny of the way life rolls the dice for us all.

The film was banned by the Polish government prior to its release, due to inherent criticisms of the government. The picture was finally released in Poland in 1987 with some cuts dictated by the censor board. It wasn’t until the fall of Communism in Europe in 1989 that the complete works of Krzysztof Kieślowski (who had been making movies since the 70s) emerged from behind the Iron Curtain so that the rest of the world could discover him.

The Criterion Collection has reassembled Blind Chance to its 1981 version—with the exception of an audio-only portion of a few seconds of a police beating that, for some reason, “couldn’t be restored.” The 4K digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Krzysztof Pakulski, is clean and sharp, providing the viewer with the best possible edition of this important work. The soundtrack is in uncompressed stereo.

Supplements include the Holland interview; a new interview with Polish film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski; and demonstrations of the nine pieces of the film that were censored in 1987. The booklet contains an essay by film critic Dennis Lim and a 1993 interview with Kieslowski.

Blind Chance is recommended for discerning cinema enthusiasts looking for a little European history, intelligence, and artful filmmaking. A truly gifted auteur, Kieślowski departed this plane of existence way too early (in 1996 at the age of fifty-four). Perhaps he is now living his own alternate timeline.

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