Slawomir Idziak

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INTERVIEW WITH SLAWOMIR IDZIAK

by Lindsay Amos

Photo: C. Niedenthal

Slawomir (Slawek) Idziak is one of a select group of Polish cinematographers who have become major figures in inter-national cinema over the last few years. The nucleus of this group is formed by Janusz Kaminsky (Schindler's List and How To Make an American Quilt), Andrzej Sekula (Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction) and recent Academy Award nominee Piotr Subocinski (Three Colours: Red). Idziak, whose career spans nearly thirty years, has become widely known through three films for Krzysztof Kieslowski - Krótki Film o Zabijaniu/A Short Film About Killing, The Double Life of Véronique and Three Colours: Blue. But his earlier work includes fourteen films for Krzysztof Zanussi including Bilans Kwartalny /Balance (1975) and Rok Spokojnego Slonca/The Year of the Quiet Sun (1984), Andrzej Wajda's Dyrygent/The Conductor, Kieslowski's first TV film, (Przejscie Podziemne/Pedestrian Subway) in 1973, as well as films in Germany, France, Italy, Finland, Iceland and John Duigan's The Journey of August King and Andrew Niccol's Gattaca in the United States. When he was in Australia to shoot Lilian's Story, based on the life of legendary Sydney identity Bee Miles, Idziak offered his often controversial views on films and filmmaking.

Lindsay Amos: Although you are in Australia to shoot Lilian's Story, you are working with a fellow countryman as director. What attracted you to work on what seems at first glance to be a very Australian story?

Slawomir Idziak: My first contact was with John Duigan, but I knew Jerzy Domaradzki, the Polish director who finished film school in Lodz at the same time as I did - we started more or less at the same time - we didn't work together in Poland but we were together in the same group. Polish cinema is divided into groups, kind of production creativity groups, and in one of which the head of the group was Wadja, the biggest Polish director for many years and I was a member of the (other) group with Domaradzki because from time to time we were directors as well. Later on he left Poland - he is now a resident of Australia and simply being a Pole and getting a chance to do Lilian's Story he asked me if I would do it. I read the script and it seems to me that it's (about) an incredibly interesting character and it's a kind of challenge for the cinematographer to do such a movie; it is a risky project, but I have to say I was astonished at the creativity and standard of my collaborators here.

Did it seem very foreign or even exotic to you?

In a way I'm used to doing things which seem to be exotic because Double Life of Véronique we shot in Paris and I don't even speak French, I have nothing to do with France. I mean this story has universal appeal, it's not a local story; it's the story of a tormented soul, somebody who because of her life, because of her troubles, tries to tell us something, using Shakespeare as a pretext - about a universal truth, namely that we are all about to die! It's talking to the people about their egos, about their small lives, especially in a big city. For me the most interesting part of the story was to try and find a way to transform such a feeling to the screen.

You decide on this from initially reading the script?

From the script, talking with the director, and from the book. For example, the original script had as the opening Lilian just leaving the (psychiatric) hospital and my suggestion was that we have one scene before - a night scene - which seems to me to be a kind of announcement, an invitation to a journey, a better presentation of the protagonist, especially the first close-up of Lilian who is standing in front of a window with her eyes covered by a bar, so we see only her mouth - you can't see the eyes of the actress. This seems to me to be a clear indication to the audience where we are into.

Part of the film has a period setting, the fifties, doesn't it?

Yes, the general problem always is that we are telling the story in two time levels - flashbacks is a very common technique and something the audience is used to - but they need an indication of jumping between the two periods. The problem has something to do with the general style of the movie which is extremely important and in this case I tried not very strongly to make a difference - (unlike) where you have flashbacks in which you have something totally opposite to the contemporary time.

Ruth Cracknell: Lilian's Story

So we have a slight colour difference, generally the flashbacks are more yellowish, but the contemporary time is not neutral grading, it's very warm, very red, but the difference is very slight. And it seems to me that it's a way to understand that Lilian is a person very much concentrated on her own complicated life, because to find a key to understand this person you have to understand her complications - her very, very difficult childhood and her relationship with her father - such a strong, negative personality affected her life very strongly.

I know you don't want to say too much about a film which is still in progress but what are there any major differences for you making a film in Australia compared with Europe or America?

There is a general problem in that we are working all over the world but people are doing films in a different way. In each country the effect is the same but the approach is different. The system to organise the crew, the way the film is done is completely different but what puzzles me is that we very easily adapt to a "bad" system - I call it Americanisation. There are two approaches to production; a high budget with an enormous amount of personnel around, an enormous number of vehicles and a compacted period of shooting and the other method which in my opinion should be taken under consideration which is a small crew and a little bit more room for shooting, so the time pressure is not so enormous. It has to do with the conservative approach of human beings. Somehow we tend to forget that the technique develops very quickly and we do not adapt our habits to the development of technique. There is something wrong! So we should try to analyse the different experiences in different countries, because there are a lot of positive examples, not only in Poland where the relationship between the director and cinematographer is completely different from the West, but in Germany for example the same film (Lilian's Story) would have been made with half the personnel but what is important is that we would get the same result on the screen. Of course you are always dependent on the human talent and approach but in terms of production values (meaning the money invested being visible on the screen) you'd probably get the same having much less people around.

Could you explain then the director/cinematographer relationship as it exists in Poland?

Our country was for so many years in seclusion, so somehow we had to use a different system...it was first of all grounded in the film schools, in which we had only two departments; the director department and the cinematographer department so these two people were at the head of the productions. In Poland the cinematographer is number two, and starts work on the project very early. Kieslowski for example gives you the first treatment - the first three pages of a script and nearly in 80% of cases the cinematographer works out of the shooting script - which is not really the shooting script, it's another version of the script - so the director is expecting the cinematographers to bring their own work; they are expecting a collaborator in terms of translating the story he has in mind to a kind of visual work. So it was something very unusual when I all of a sudden realised that here in the west it was the director who was telling the cinematographer "put the camera here," I mean it's two different professions and I really don't believe, with some exceptions of course as usual, that it's possible to have total control of the actors and the flow of the story and deciding about a single particular take and the lens and the visual part of it. In being a director you shouldn't be too close because very quickly you are losing the sense of the wholeness; the most important element of the profession (and I am someone who has directed as well) to remember that (as cinematographer) in effect I should be one who observes what happens on the location from the seat of the average spectator. So I really believe in creative group work, and somehow our example in the Polish cinema where we are really creative partners of the director is a very good example. It works. To be a future cinematographer you have to change your attitude, because the technique is simpler and simpler - it's not enough to be simply a technician, you have to be a partner, you have to understand the majority of the story.

Probably the most controversial film in the Decalogue series, and one which brought both you and Kieslowski international attention, was A Short Film About Killing. There has been a lot of discussion about your use of filters - some say 600, some say 200 - let's just say there were a lot, but did the filmstock help with the garish effect you were trying to achieve; it was Orwocolor wasn't it?

No, it was Agfa! But it was not my decision, it was more an economic decision; it doesn't mean I have anything against Agfa, it is a very interesting negative for certain things but in this case it was a decision already made by the producers of The Decalogue. The Decalogue is a very interesting story because in a way I didn't want to do A Short Film About Killing. Kiesolowski approached me and gave me (the choice) of all ten films. The problem was it was planned as a 16mm television series and for a Polish cinematographer doing 16mm is a nightmare because the quality of our laboratories is very low and I decided to do Number 9, a very simple story about love and jealousy. Then Kieslowski told me, "I know your trick, the moment I'm ready to do Number 9, you'll be abroad and have no time to do it. And now when I'm ready to do A Short Film About Killing (number 5) you won't do it!" I said to Kieslowski, "Listen why do I have to do it; after half an hour one person gets killed, after another half an hour another person gets killed in prison. It's a terrible story! Why do I have to do it?" But he's a very stubborn person and he persuaded me to do it. I told him, "O.K. I will do the film on the condition that I do it green and using all my filters and I have an idea to do it very strong," and Kieslowski was very angry and he says, "I don't want to have it green! I'm doing ten films; I can't have all of a sudden one green!" So I said, "It's up to you. Either I do it green, or I don't do it." The next day he came to me and said, "I'm doing ten films, O.K. If one has to be green, let it be shit green. It's your decision. Do it green."

Miroslaw Baka: A Short Film About Killing "It's your decision. Do it green"

And, you know, it's the first time in my life that it happened: a director telling me, do what you want. Normally you carry this burden of responsibility for somebody (else). Normally you are afraid to do something new. Normally you have to calculate very precisely how far you may go to risk something. This is fundamental freedom. Do what you want. And I'm not going to destroy my career. It's something which is very unusual in this profession; it's telling us something about our subconscious: we are under pressure which is somehow devastating...so this movie was in a way a kind of guide for me, you have to find a method so that you are not a prisoner of this incredible responsibility of a million dollars somebody finds, you have to find a way to be more open, to risk something from time to time otherwise you will repeat yourself.

And when you started to see the results?

I was scared, because it was strange, it was so unusual. The first screening was really disappointing. With the second screening with two or three scenes cut together very quickly we realised there was something (there) but the rushes are always having something bad and it was so far from the normal look and we didn't really get the colour I wanted; it was the work print, it was far from the end effect - a little bit too dark. But later on it worked. And this is something about Kieslowski, he is open to any kind of risk, he really gives room to the cinematographer because he strongly believes that the look is more important than anything else. It's not so much what we are telling, but how we are telling it, because he understand to what extent the style affects the story. He understands that the style is the story itself. Changing the style, changes the story. What I really like is not so much the shooting, which is challenging and interesting of course, but to work with Kieslowski before we start (shooting) we spend weeks or months on the script and this collaboration is the most interesting part.

The filmstocks you used on the earlier films you did with say Zanussi and Wajda, they would have been East German?

No so much, because for the leading directors they always get a certain amount of Kodak but in many cases if we didn't have enough we shot the daytime scenes in colour and the night scenes on B&W material. It was a problem, because the shooting ratio was one-to-five maximum, and the average ratio here in the west would be one-to-twelve, so it was an economic way of doing it, but I shot a lot of scenes on Orwo - you may say it was bad, but it was a completely different look, but somehow we are fed up with the look of the negatives we know; there is not much difference between Kodak, Fuji and Agfa in terms of the colours because the technology is very much the same. Professionals may see the difference but for the average spectator they are more or less the same and they know the look of the sunsets, the dusks, the nights, how the negative will react to reds, to blues - they've seen it a hundred times, and it's a pity we don't have more rich possibilities in terms of the material but there is in the future the possibility to change colours with computers - on the home PC, opening a completely new age in cinematography and I'm really looking forward to it.

The Double Life of Véronique is an audacious twist on the theme of twin personalities; once again you are telling two different stories in one film.

I like very much The Double Life of Véronique because it was a film in which we were sort of innocent people. It was Kieslowski's first foreign film, it was a great atmosphere on location and for me it was one of the most important things, it was the film on which I had wanted to work all my life. It was a miracle atmosphere because all the elements of production worked. The miracle in the way we found Irene Jacob - she was a completely unknown actress - Kieslowski had planned the movie with Andie MacDowell, he couldn't get her because of financial problems, so one month before the production (started) we didn't have an actress. Yes, I feel responsible for the visual part of the film, the decision about the colour, the decision about many of the special visual effects like the crystal ball, but it's very difficult to tell "it was mine - it was his, you know". The erotic scene let us say was an idea of mine but that doesn't mean that Kieslowski is some kind of passive person standing behind me just not being active. He has his own way of understanding things and proposing such-and-such a solution but generally he's very much concentrated on the actors. He doesn't look through the camera, but we have discussions in general terms of style and atmosphere.

Irene Jacob: The Double Life of Veronique

So what were the major problems which you were able to solve as the cinematographer?

The first problem was to do the unbelievable very early - to find a key to make the story which sounds very, very, literal, believable on the screen and of course it was a risk to do it. A great help was the Zbigniew Priesner's incredible music because it's a beautiful tool to open quite strongly the subconscious of the public and we tried to figure out what kind of pictures would help to assist the atmosphere. The most important problem was to solve the knot between the end of the first act and the beginning of the second - the death of the Polish Weronika and the beginning of the French Véronique. It was something we knew from the very beginning has to be very strong visually to let the public swallow something which is completely, totally unbelievable! So there was a certain effort being made here and the second challenge was that we were conscious that the first phase of the Polish Weronika was easy to achieve because it was part of our lives but somehow France is the exotic land for us. So there was a decision to bring these two worlds together. Instead of differences we tried very hard to find the same world, so we looked in France for the city which looked more or less the same as Krakow and Clermont-Ferrand was the place which was built with exactly the same stones, the same colour, so we knew that we were back more or less in the same atmosphere. And as well we decided that it's much more important to concentrate on her inner landscape, because this very specific sensible character is so concentrated on her own subconscious, forgetting the reality around her.

This puts a considerable responsibility on the cinematographer, not merely to visualise this inner landscape, but to put it on screen.

Kieslowski he is a director who has the ability to change something during the shooting; he doesn't mechanically follow the script, he's the one who understood at certain moments that the film has its own, independent life. He really understands this so we changed a lot; we changed the end of the movie, we changed a lot of elements especially the second part because all of a sudden very quickly Kieslowski realised that the development of the second Véronique shouldn't be from scratch - it has to be in the middle of her story. It was one of the nicest experiences I ever had during shooting. The low budget somehow forces you to come up with simple ideas which very often is a help.

When you came to do Three Colours trilogy, once again with Kieslowski, you chose Blue, though Kieslowski claims you could have shot Red and Piotr Subocinski could have shot Blue...

Three Colours: Blue

Yes, Kieslowski was always very nice to me, because I shot his first TV films, his first feature films, the first film (shot) in The Decalogue series, his first foreign film (Véronique) and he approached me to decide which of the Three Colours I wanted to do and I decided to do the first one, Blue. Red was another option for me, it seemed to me a very, very personal project and I was afraid that my vision and his vision may grow too far apart, there was such a risk. But later on I realised that the risk of Blue was that it was a little bit too close to Véronique. Again, the function of the music, Juliette Binoche was a composer, all these elements were a bit of a problem for us because we are always afraid we are going to repeat the same numbers. But traditionally, I decided to do Blue and I'm happy because it was a great experience, but I like the film Red as well, I very much like the work of my younger colleague, Subocinski. It's completely different, I would never have photographed the film in such a way. It's an example of what I was saying before, the way Kieslowski works with the cinematographer; he's open for completely new work.

On the other hand, it's difficult to see Juliette Binoche and Irene Jacob swapping roles. Binoche seems "cool", Jacob seems "warm", or am I reading too much into them?

Well, in the casting...Blue is the kind of story where somebody has to be more grown up, I tried to make it a story about somebody who has to try to start a new life in complete seclusion - having no kind of emotional involvement, so probably it's more that Binoche is a person who is already grown up and has a very strong personality, but I wouldn't say she's cool, she's simply somebody strong.

Re-viewing the film I was surprised how few overt blue references there are; there is a lot of warm light.

Well I decided to use the colour blue as a kind of dramaturgical colour - a colour which has a meaning; we tried not to exaggerate so we don't have too much blue on the actual locations apart from the blue notes and maybe two or three other elements. Mostly blue happens as light coming at the most important moments of the film, so the strong blue scenes are the scenes of her loneliness in the swimming pool, reflections on her face, the glass bead lampshade (photo, above left), so I tried to use it in a very economical way; if you stick to one colour direction the public would forget about it; they would have an impression of the look, but they would have trouble to name it. So we keep the film with a warm atmosphere and having quite strong, very aggressive blue at important moments. The blue we are having is the strong, aggressive, artificial - I took the strongest gel and did a lot of tests trying to find the most theatrical blue, which has nothing to do with the natural blue that is already around.

There is a lot of concentration on details; an eye, a mouth, the musical notes, a teaspoon, a coffee cup - a kind of visual punctuation.

It's interesting to observe that the narrator which is so visible in literature in cinema is the structure; we're putting the takes in such a way that somehow the fragmented reality is not fragmented any longer. Some of these takes have nothing to do with the story but help the audience to understand our intention and of course it's very difficult to find any general advice how to do it because if you ask the audience on leaving the cinema about these takes they won't remember them. You might say they comment on the story. In the case of Blue, it was clear for me that (Julie's) anger is as much inside as outside so I tried on purpose to limit the anger...and for this reason I came up with the suggestion of macro-photography of certain things which Kieslowski may or may not use. Always, if I have time, I'm trying to do quite a few such takes, additional takes which give the director the chance during the editing process to put in several moments of the film, small elements which very often helps a lot.

As a non-musician, I was fascinated by the shot where you show Julie in the process of composition, following the notes. It gives the audience the impression of being able to read music. (photo, above right)

You know for certain kinds of movies, for most movies, it would be much better to have music before (the shooting)! But the system is that you do the movie and add the music later on. If you have music on the location, music you are going to use later, it has enormous impact - on the atmosphere, how the scene is blocked, how the scene is paced. For this kind of movie where you are speaking about somebody's fate, you are not concentrating on evident things, it's not a genre film, but let us say a psychological drama, films which I really like to do. For this kind of film having music on location is a must, it is an enormous tool giving the cinematographer, actors, everybody involved, the director of course as well, a kind of common denominator. Hearing the music you know where you are into much easier. Sure, it's easier for the composer to see the film and write the music, but perhaps it would be interesting to give the composer the script the same way you would the cinematographer. When the movie has been made all the decisions have been taken but if the composer brings in the music it may open several gates that wouldn't open if you didn't get the music before.

Still on technique, did you use a Steadicam in Blue? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

No, I never use a Steadicam. The problem with a Steadicam is - I am many years working with a hand-held camera - and somehow I realised even making a test that the way I manage to use a hand-held camera it's really not worth it, to use a Steadicam. It's something to do with a certain sense of rhythm, you adapt easily to the actors' rhythm. The Steadicam dampens the rhythm between the actor walking and the cinematographer walking. So I am trying a different technique, I am trying to adapt my way of working to the actors. I am breathing with them, I am walking the same steps and in my opinion you are getting the identical effect, and much faster because you don't need all the preparation, or a special operator. Again in Europe a Steadicam is always a certain budget problem. Now I am very well-known as a cinematographer who is doing a lot of hand-held camerawork - up to 90% of the takes are hand-held in some movies. Again using a hand-held camera is a way to tell (the audience) something more because knowing that the film I am into is done with hand-held camera work from beginning to end, I have in mind that two or three times in the film I am changing it to the tripod and only by doing this you get some support for certain scenes. Subconsciously the audience senses the camera moving a little bit, the suddenly at a turning point - a dialogue scene - the camera is deadly still. It's another reason that maybe I can't work in America successfully, because I really can't imagine that somebody else could do the camera movement for me. It's so important for me to have the camera in the hand.

You've actually shot more films with Zanussi than anybody else, is that correct?

That's true. Zanussi was my first permanent partner. In the beginning I was a little bit insecure but it was evident that with each new project I was part of his team and maybe it gives me for the first time a sense of security, a sense of development. I learnt a lot because I realised that it's not only a problem of one movie, it's the kind of personal relationship which we somehow developed through the years with all the advantages and disadvantages, because the director and cinematographer is like a marriage, you survive all the ups and downs. As far as I know he's very interested in doing something new with me, but change is always interesting, you're getting other options, another chance and it's something extremely interesting in this profession that you learn to see the world together and this is one of the risks: that your kind of imagination would not be responsive enough to somebody else. But I owe a great debt to Zanussi because I learned a lot and I got enough time and room to work.

Are Zanussi and Kieslowski very different personalities?

They are very different, but they are friends. Most directors are doing always the same story. If I am working with Zanussi or Kieslowski I know more or less what inclinations he has. It's the quality of an artist; you know they are obsessed by certain developments, certain problems, they are obsessed by a certain premise, not just for one film but all of their films. Maybe it's very difficult to name it, but you sense it, it's natural and I think it is a very positive element. For example the film Blue is a much more interesting film than Bez KoÆca / No End (1984) a film about the same subject. [Grazyna Szapolowska plays a woman who attempts to adapt to the sudden loss of her husband in a car crash which opens the film].

You've also worked with Andrej Wajda?

Only on two projects. One was as camera operator only, on Wesele/The Wedding, the other was The Conductor. It was a unique experience. In Poland there was a bit of competition between what were the two greatest directors, Zanussi and Wajda and somehow I was connected with the camp of Zanussi, so I didn't have much chance to work with Wajda. I would love to do another project with him but working with Zanussi automatically cleared me from the Wajda camp - which I understand. But The Conductor was a very interesting project; it was very low budget and I had a lot of chances to show my ability to do something but I was not very happy with the kind of work I delivered, but my only excuse is that we were very short of time.

Bearing in mind your strong opinions on the cinematographer's role, how do you approach a film which you are directing? I know you've made several prize-winning TV films; they're children's films mainly aren't they?

When I'm doing my own films as director, I work with the camera as well. So I am director and cameraman; somebody is doing the lighting, but I realised doing my last movie as a director that I can't observe the actors standing next to the camera. Looking through the camera is so organic for me so I really cannot understand how it is possible to have somebody else behind the camera and explaining to him how to do it. Another thing, it would limit my way of using filters; I very often have five or six filters in the camera and I have to do it personally as I keep on adjusting the filters at each rehearsal so it would be very difficult to explain this to somebody (else). My first films were children's films. The last film I made was a kind of experimental story, a very low budget film, I started to do the movie as a kind of collage, having a lot of archive material which I collected from German, American and other archive houses, NASA material and having collected them I wrote a kind of speculation story about an astronaut who refuses to come back to Earth. I tried to experiment on the level of language, because the film is built like a television program and a marriage of the archive film and the footage we made on location. It was released in Poland, but it's really a television film. I had a cameraman who is a friend of mine - it was a nice collaboration as I understand this sort of cameraman very well, but this was not a film in which an extremely interesting look was necessary - just the opposite, we had to photograph it in a very ugly way because I didn't want too much distance from the archival footage. A lot of the footage we made on the video camera and transferred to 35. It was the kind of film where you are lying about everything because I used archive footage which everyone knows perfectly well.

You've been teaching in many film schools around the world, including the AFTRS. Apart from technical details what kind of philosophical advice do you try to give you students?

Being a cinematographer is not simply to have a lot of ideas, but being conscious of how a certain style is going to be accepted by the audience. The way you are going to photograph a film affects the story; changing the style of the film changes the story as well so it's something from the very beginning - from the script - trying to see which way to photograph it to support, to underline the story. To discuss with the director to get his personal approach, the reason why he's doing the film, because it helps enormously to find a key to translate his premise, his idea into the pictures. Using a picture is always concrete; you can't have an abstract picture - you may try but it's very difficult, especially in terms of cinema where you have something in focus and it has a certain physical value. How can we use this to describe something so erratic as the secret of the human soul, inner conflicts, somebody's hidden agenda? This is something which is always for me the challenge for cinematographers, something which attracts me, something which is so interesting in this profession. We have our personal view of the world and this view represents our psychological state, our psychological approach. So this for me is some kind of method and I'm always trying to advise my students, "If you are in trouble or don't know how to shoot a scene, think about the life of your protagonist, how it was before he enters the movie," because it is a key - all of a sudden you realise what kind of person he is; it's much easier then to understand how he is seeing the world around him.

The first film you made in America, The Journey of August King, happened to be with an Australian director, John Duigan. How did you adapt to shooting in America and how did you come to work on the project?

It was an interesting experience for both of us. For a cinematographer my way of working was completely not understood. For example to place a lamp you have to speak with two heads of department. The electricians only positions the lamp, for anything to do with gels and cutters you have to speak with the head of the grip department. It is ridiculous; it is another example of how strongly conservative they are. Here, the way we are working in Australia is much more healthy. But it's one of the things I realised doing a film in America, is so deeply traditional. You can do things much simpler, much faster, and give your director much more room, more time for the important things.

Perhaps it was easier working with Duigan than an American director for your first film there...

It's very difficult to judge; but it was a union film. We shot it in North Carolina. But it was a very enjoyable, very interesting experience. The film was very difficult, it was a period film, set in the beginning of the 19th century, so again the look of the film was very important and it seems that the producers and John were happy with the way I photographed the film. My impression is that the American industry will accept a different artistic vision provided you fit in with their traditional system!

Originally published in Cinema Papers magazine (Australia) August 1995

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