‘Hysterical Excess,’ Andrzej Zulawski Films at BAMcinématek (original) (raw)
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Food, Politics and Sex, Brought to a Boil
The director Andrzej Zulawski is the focus of a BAMcinématek retrospective.Credit...Sergiusz Peczek
- March 2, 2012
“HYSTERICAL EXCESS: DISCOVERING ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI” is the film programmer’s equivalent of a banner headline. It’s not exactly misleading, but the subject of this BAMcinématek retrospective is definitely displeased.
“ ‘Hysterical’ is a word I abhor,” Mr. Zulawski (zhoo-WOFF-skee) said when reached by telephone in Warsaw. On the advice of his doctor, the 71-year-old director won’t be flying in for his first-ever American retrospective, which begins Wednesday, but if he could choose a word for the series, it would be the French coinage “Zulawskienne” — a synonym, he explains, for “over the top.” “Everything not according to their way of thinking is ‘bizarre,’ ” he said of the French, who have financed 7 of his 12 features. “But I like it. It makes me distinctive.”
The word to best describe the Zulawski oeuvre might be “awful” in its root sense of inspiring dread. Exuding charm and urbanity on the phone, Mr. Zulawski is nonetheless an auteur to be approached with trepidation. His movies are seldom more than a step from some flaming abyss, with his actors (and audience) trembling on the edge. Typically shot with a frenzied, often subjective moving camera in saturated colors that have the over-bright feel of a chemically induced hallucination, these can be hard to watch and harder to forget.
Zulawski films reap the emotional whirlwind. For his characters, all love is what the Surrealists called “mad love.” They are big on frantic coupling, nonstop ranting and smearing food, sometimes all at once. “The actors make love to the camera,” Mr. Zulawski explained when asked about his directorial strategies, “and the camera makes love to them.” Although the camera often seems a participant in a ménage à trois, at least once a movie it executes a mind-boggling pas de deux with a single actor.
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“The Third Part of the Night” (1971), with Malgorzata Braunek.Credit...BAMcinématek/Polish National Film Archive
The legendary scene midway through “Possession“ (1981), the lone cine Zulawskienne example released in the United States, has Isabelle Adjani flinging herself against the walls of a dank West Berlin underpass while hemorrhaging fluids from every orifice. This convulsive performance won Ms. Adjani the best actress prize at Cannes, although the director recalls that upon her initial viewing of the film she retreated to the nearest bathroom to feign cutting her wrists. “Possession,” in which her character also slashes herself with a carving knife and enjoys conjugal relations with a slime creature fabricated by E.T.’s designer, Carlo Rambaldi, is not unique in the Zulawski oeuvre. “The Shaman” (1996) ends with its female protagonist bludgeoning her lover’s skull and spooning his brains into her mouth.
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