Blind Chance

Year: 1987
Genre: Drama
Directed: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: Boguslaw Linda, Tadeusa Lomnicki, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Bogualawa Pawelec, Marzena Trybala, Jacek Borkowski, Jacek Sas-Borkowski, Adam Ferency, Monika Gozdzik, Zygmunt Hubner, Irena Byrska
Production: P.P. Film Polski

Blind Chance is at once a morality tale, an ambitious specimen of philosophy, and a vacuous deterministic dirge. Within the first thirty minutes we're introduced to Polish medical student Witek Dlugosz (Linda) who is attempting to catch a train to the belabored strings of Wojciech Kilar's soundtrack. He passes crowds and obstacles including a elderly woman and a man drinking a beer. The film then prongs into three possible outcomes, each dramatically changing the young students life. In one scenario he catches the train and becomes a member of the Polish communist party. In another, he misses the train, runs into the railway guard, is arrested and joins an anti-communist student group. In the third scenario, Witek misses the train but bumps into his lady friend Olga (Gozdnik), they live a life of apolitical domesticity before tragedy strikes.

I love you, because I have to.

I don't feel it's a spoiler to alert the audience that in all three scenarios tragedy strikes. In fact tragedy strikes so often that the fatalism imbued throughout made me wonder what the fellow with the beer was up to. Even the events before the fated train ride has Witek's father passing away. In each scenario Witek comes across three possible lovers and three possible father figures, all of which force Witek to accept a version of truth in bad faith and he always ends up damaged goods.

And who is Witek for that matter? What foundations do we have to truly know a person whose deeply felt political beliefs can be so drastically changed by the catching of a train? We get a quiet moment with Witek and love interest #2 Werka (Trybala) where Witek retells the history of his family; how his great-grandfather took part in an uprising or how his grandfather fought the soviets etc. Yet even in a moment of heart-to-heart we're always calculating where Witek's place is in the larger picture, unable to grasp at what would otherwise be an emotional scene. There's a ring of hollowness to everything he does simply because we're always aware he's chained to his fate. He's not so much a character as he is a vessel for Kieslowski's cold and cobbled thought experiment. Thus when we get to the nexus of Kieslowski's political message, the structure with which it's based on falls apart.

While being a thought experiment, the film does give it's audience a pretty interesting tour of post-martial-law Poland. In the late 70's and early 80's pro-democracy movements sprouted all throughout the countryside. In 1980, the largest group was Solidarity, a self-governing labor union that at one point constituted one third of the total working population of the country. The single party communist state saw Solidarity and various student movements as threats to their power and on December 1981, Poland banned such organizations, instilled a curfew in major cities and sealed national borders. While martial law lasted until 1983, the resilience of opposition activists led to flagrant and open protests in the mid and late 80's. We all know what happened next. If you're looking for a much more comprehensive history lesson, may I suggest Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble (1976) and Man of Iron (1981). As it stands Blind Chance's clever inserts of contemporary history are just that, clever inserts.

Amid the history and the slow, prosaic plot lies a strong political statement that has been completely undermined by the film's framework. I expected the somber humanism that made the Colors Trilogy (1993-1994) so engrossing yet what I got was the blunted causal pessimism that similarly plagues A Short Film About Killing (1988) of it's message. Don't fall for the hype on this one.

Final Grade: D+