Iluminacja (1973)

Title and Date: Iluminacja (Illumination) (1973)IMDb Rating: 7.8/10 (107 votes)Runtime: 87 minLanguage: PolishCountry: PolandColor : Color IMDb URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070217/Director : Krzysztof ZanussiCast:Stanislaw Latallo ... Franciszek RetmanMalgorzata Pritulak ... MalgorzataMonika Dzienisiewicz-Olbrychska ... AgnieszkaEdward Zebrowski ... PhysicianJan Skotnicki ... ChoryAnna Horecka ... Matka ChoregoJadwiga Colonna-Walewska ... Franciszek's Mother Wlodzimierz Zonn ... DeanWlodzimierz Zawadzki ... Assistanta.o.

Description:Whilst Polish cinema is best known internationally for names such as Oscar-winning in Andrzej Wajda andthe currently fashionable Krzysztof Kieslowski, one of the most important names in the country'sfilm history — Krzysztof Zanussi — is less well-known to international audiences. This is despitethe fact that he was a pioneer of the famous kino moralnego niepokoju (cinema of moralconcern) 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 onthe human condition, its title is taken from medieval philosophy. The hero's development is episodic andfamiliar: 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. Withmaturity 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-conscioustechnique is sometimes irritating, but more often proves sufficiently provocative to hold attention.

Time Out Film Guide

Writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi’s early "Iluminacja" is autobiographical. Its protagonist, FranciszekRetman, is a graduate student in physics because he wants to know, he tells the university interviewingboard, “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 Universityof Kraków. Finally, he studied film at the Lódź Film School and became Poland’s 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 Retman’s experience.I do not know, however, whether Zanussi suffers (or suffered) any such serious heart diseaseas 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 thedeath of a friend during their mountain-climb. But something else floats in and about: theresponsibility of scientists that they are loath to embrace. Zanussi has stated: “The scientist ismore interesting than anyone else as he is more responsible for the world than the usualpeople one finds in movies.” Yet early on Retman remarks, “I don’t feel responsible for the A-

 

bomb,” on the ridiculous grounds that he hadn’t participated in its invention. Another student,though, wins their argument by exposing Retman’s evasiveness, self-absorption, self-delusion:“But [the inventors] were physicists, too.” Retman’s journey, then, is in the direction of responsibility. Those who climb mountains, as Zanussi’s masterpiece, "Constans" (1980),reminds us, must return to earth, one way or the other.

Most decisive for the brilliance of Zanussi’s "Illumination" is the form he has given it. It’s amosaic, a kaleidoscope of pieces in which one set of snippets of film sometimes is interruptedby another set of snippets. This “piecing together” opposes viewer complacency so that eventhose of us who are intellectually inferior to Zanussi — and that includes all but one person I’veknown or met, René Girard — are compelled to approach his film in an intelligent, mentallyactive 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 Retmaninterrupts his contemplation of cosmos to have his palm read. His motive is devious: he iscurious to see how inaccurate the palm reader will prove herself! She tells him that he doesn’tlike himself. She is saying this to a most self-satisfied creature. But, of course, Zanussi’s prickof wit eventually turns around and aims itself at the boy, whose self-satisfaction has been anevasion, 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 theinfamous Arsenal movie theatre in Berlin in 1990, next to films by Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Ackermann, Ozu,Tarr, Renoir...