NO END
A film review by Gareth Rees
Copyright 1994 Gareth Rees
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski Starring: Grazyna Szapolowska, Maria Pakulnis, Aleksander Bardini Producer: Ryszard Chutkowski Camera: Jacek Petrycki Editor: Krystyna Rutkowska Music: Zbigniew Preisner Durantion: 107 minutes Poland 1984
Antek is dead, but his ghost lingers on to watch his wife Ulla and their son Jacek grieve for him. The parallels with Kieslowski's later film BLUE are striking. Both films focus on a woman whose husband has died in a car and who leaves behind unfinished business--in BLUE, the "Song for the Unification of Europe," in NO END, the legal defence of a strike organiser (it is 1984, and Poland is under martial law)--which his wife initially resists but eventually becomes involved with. She discovers evidence of her husband's lover. She befriends another woman. And the music that dominates NO END is the moving funeral march that is attributed to the fictitious composer "van den Budenmayer" in BLUE.
The treatment of this subject in NO END is grittier, more realistic, less optimistic. There is no suggestion that Ulla will find fulfilment in her new-found liberty. All struggle seems futile--sex is joyless, even hypnosis cannot make Ulla forget, and even though the striker is freed, everyone knows that this is because he gave in to the system instead of fighting it.
In BLUE, the presence of Julie's husband Patrice is hinted at through Julie's memories of his music. In NO END, Antek's ghost looks on unhappily as people's lives unravel. The title may refer to the unfinality of death, but it also seems to suggest that the painful struggle of life is unending. This is the most fatalistic of Kieslowski's films.
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