Blind Chance [Blu-ray]

I am an immense fan of Krzysztof Kieslowski. Most famously, there is his excellent trilogy named for the colors in the French flag: Red, White, and Blue. Doppelgängers are explored in “The Double Life of Veronique.” His “The Decalogue,” 10 one-hour segments, purportedly based on a sin in each of the 10 commandments, is simply superlative. Most regrettably, it is not available for streaming; I’d love to see it again so much so that I’ll probably pop for the 40 bucks for the DVDs.Ah, the vicissitudes indeed. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I am old enough to remember when all the ethnic slurs were aimed at the eastern Europeans, with the Poles very close to the top of the list. All those jokes about how many (slur) does it take to screw in a lightbulb, all with the aim of proving how dumb and obtuse they are. What a counterpoint Kieslowski is. His insights into the ambiguities of the human condition, with Mother Chance playing such a heavy role.This is Kieslowski's first movie, released in 1981. All the parts but one that were censored were restored. In viewing it, I thought why would the Polish authorities allow any of it to be shown? Overall, one should spare a kind thought for Poland, sandwiched between the giants of Germany and Russia. Poland would completely disappear from time to time. It was the invasion of Poland in 1939 that commenced the Second World War in Europe. Poland faired poorly, being a central battleground between the Soviets and the Nazis. In the movie, it is recovering slowly, in fits and starts, the drab tenement housing, the peeling concrete courtyards, the ill-fitted doors and cabinets. A Black and White film underscores the squalor of daily living.Who amongst us has not raced to catch a bus, train or plane? The race is a central theme in the movie… Witek, the medical student runs through the station, hitting an old woman, knocking a coin out of her hand, and it roles across the payment and an alcoholic picks it up, a “bonne chance,” his beer for the day. Pushing to the head of the line, he gets his ticket and tries to chase down the train as it is leaving the station. In one version, he catches it. In the other two versions, he does not. In all three cases, his life takes remarkably different paths. Kieslowski is a master at subtly repeating incidents to demonstrate a particular theme, or perhaps the opposite.Boguslaw Linda brilliantly plays Witek. The medical student who decides he had lost the vocation (or maybe not) and tries on the various other roles available in Polish society. Naturally, there is the orthodoxy and leaden hand of The Party, oppressing the dissident students and unruly workers. There is also The Church, another set of orthodoxies and crushing authority. And if you play your cards right… play The Game, you can be rewarded, as Tom Courtney was told in “The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner.” In Witek’s case, it is a passport, exit visa and a trip to France. (Ok, even I’ll play the game if that is the reward.)Though it seems that the real reward is the love making. Witek has three different partners, and Kieslowski lovingly films the passionate intensity, heighten by the prevailing drabness around them (in one case, she insisted on the floor!). Would you turn in your partner after that, if The Party demanded it?Ah, the ending, and clearly Kieslowski has some concerns in this matter, since he repeated it in one of his three color movies. For Kieslowski’s debut performance, ironically the last movie of his that I have watched, 5-stars, plus.

This review is specifically about the Criterion Blu-Ray release of the great BLIND CHANCE, though Criterion's DVD releases are virtually identical save the specific encoding. All special features are identical; and the special features of this film are a must-have for any cinephile with a political interest.First, a note about the film: BLIND CHANCE is a minor masterpiece of a Polish master filmmaker. Krzysztof Kieslowski's MOST well known films in America include his intensely beautiful TROIS COULEURS: BLEU, BLANC, ROUGE (Three Colors: Blue, White, Red) trilogy released in the early 1990s. These films represent the peak of his meticulous, humanist, metaphysical interrogations of interconnection in the modern world, a dominant theme over his career. They are beautifully photographed and masterfully acted films, and are the final films Kieslowski produced before his death. (Note: These films are ALSO available in a must-purchase Criterion Collection set). Other films exploring similar themes include THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (Also available via Criterion), and the seminal , absolute masterpiece THE DECALOGUE, a ten-film series dedicated to exploring the implications of the Ten Commandments on modern life in late-Communist Poland in one apartment building. All of these films are must-owns masterpieces.BLIND CHANCE is a transitional film for Kieslowski, and represents (as one of the tremendous essays included with this collection discusses) the pivot point in Kieslowski's career from his early humanist and subtly anti-establishment political pieces to a much more metaphysically and morally investigative humanism of his later work. BLIND CHANCE follows a single character through three potential timelines, and the personal and political implications that unspool as a result of very slight differences in the breaking point between the three timelines. They all hinge on the moment that the central character, Witek, either makes or misses a train, and what happens to him as a result of the people he meets. In the first, he becomes a political functionary in the Communist bureaucracy; in the second he becomes an imprisoned anti-Communist radical; in the third he becomes politically agnostic, returns to his medical studies, pushes through a more "normal" life outside of any systemic challenges (only to face the darkly comic fates regardless). This mechanic was directly copied by both SLIDING DOORS, which exploits it for romantic-comedic popcorn, and RUN LOLA RUN, which restructures BLIND CHANCE's crucial humanist/political interrogation into video-game chic. Neither reach the subtlety and investigation into the human condition as successfully as Kieslowski.BLIND CHANCE is also a vital document of a specific political moment in Poland. Produced in 1980, when the political classes were engaging in a series of grappling power dynamics which would ultimately break the Communist systems apart in Poland later in the decade, BLIND CHANCE depicts the nuances, conflicts, and personal engagements of these social structures in multiple ways. This is a fabulously interesting element of the film; but it also is one of the reasons of BLIND CHANCE's more notorious issues: it was shelved entirely until 1987 when it was finally released, even AFTER it had been significantly cut by the political censors.Thus, we can talk about this edition and the SPECIAL FEATURES:The first, most important issue is that this film is almost entirely RESTORED. Only one short scene was not preserved in some form, and in the cut of the film presented it cuts to black with text describing the missing censored film footage; though the audio itself continues as the audio was fully recovered. So, this film represents the most fully restored version of this film, a version of the film essentially unseen by anybody other than the technical crew and the censorship board in Poland in 1980. This is an incredible restoration. The quality of the restoration and encoding is SUBLIME. I have two other editions of this film on DVD (the Kino DVD and another international DVD), and this restoration brings colors, depth, clarity that make those DVDs seem almost unrecognizable, as though they were bootleg versions. This Blu-Ray, and the DVD version, are far, far superior in image, sound, and completeness alone.The centerpiece Special Feature is an incredible montage of the censored scenes of the film. The mechanic here is very unique. The Polish Communist censors actually left much of the film intact, and only censored out perhaps 5 minutes of total footage, but these cuts were almost never complete scenes. They were, rather, lines, reaction shots, and moments. Criterion represents this in an incredibly simple fashion in this feature: they present the scenes from the film in Black and White. Then, the shots suddenly cut to color, then back to black and white, then back to color. Any frames that are in COLOR were, in fact, censored. This methodology of presentation points out how obscure, deliberate, and baffling some of the censorship choices actually were: Where a central anti-communist protest song's exclusion makes sense, the countless reaction shots of Witek smiling or wincing or simply sitting DON'T always make logical sense to be censored.This presentation is a subtle revolution in presenting this idea (rather than the text block, or the fully presented "deleted scene" that is more common), and I am hopefully Criterion continues.There are two significant and compelling interviews of note, though each is a bit brief, with director Agneiska Holland and Polish film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski about the film. There is also a terrific contextualizing essay.

Blind Chance (1981) is one of the very best films by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. An overlooked masterpiece, I think of it as a warmup in substance and style to his next film a decade later, The Double Life of Veronique, due to its emphasis on outcomes and a person’s fate. The film really centers around what happens to Witek (played by Boguslaw Linda) after he bumps into a man drinking beer on the street in three different scenarios. There are three love interests, each with unique circumstances. The film is slow-moving (a Kieslowski trademark) but like all of his masterpieces, there is a major (usually surprising) payoff at the end. The Criterion release has all but one originally censored scene restored, so we’re getting almost everything from the original 1981 film. The picture and sound quality are pristine, and the special features are once again very interesting. I highly recommend The Criterion Collection’s release of Blind Chance; you will not be disappointed!

Blind Chance has a triangular structure,to give 3 versions of Witek's life.Kieslowski is turning inwards to underwrite his spiritual interpretation of a young man's life,buffeted by blind chance,coincidence and destiny.Film projects the conditional and future vistas,what may have happened or what might yet happen.Witek(Boguslaw Linda) is injected into 3 different scenarios of his life,one where joining the Communist Party,he works within the system to achieve a better life,one where he draws closer to belief in God(via the underground),one where he is a quietist/ apolitical doctor and marries.This covers the 3 main institutions:The Party, the church and lastly marriage.No one life is right or good.Each life is distinct and different,yet Witek remains the same.How much freedom do we have?How much is our life determined?How much does our will have to play existentially?We see Witek after hearing his dying father's words,"..you don't have to be.." he gets the freedom to choose his own path,not become what his father wanted him to be,a doctor.He takes leave to look up an old girlfriend,seeking to get a Lodz to Warsaw train,he runs to get it and catches it,or in 2 more runs to catch the same train,he misses it and gets into a fight,or he misses it and meets a fellow medical student.This explores moral and political questions,forces us to watch closely and listen attentively through the narrative magnetism of cinema.In each scenario Witek is presented with a flight ticket to France,a symbol of escape from his duties.Duties should be derived from our morality.Each life takes him on a different path,with a different goal, and meets a different set of people,in each he loves a different woman. Kieslowski believed in destiny and even said that a person is somehow predestined to act in a certain way regardless of the circumstances. Witek never managed to reach France whether he caught or missed the train. His character takes three different life roads but essentially remains the same.People don't fundamentally change.The screaming man at the start of the film and the explosive ending of the film are interconnected.We see at the start 12 fragmentary scenes which may be flashbacks to the past or possibly scenes not experienced but imagined. Witek feels he can remember the moment of his birth,surrounded by the victims of massacre by the Communist militia forces.In each life Witek does something of significant value,whether risking his life to save others,or promoting a political agenda to save Poland or becoming a doctor.His immediate situation is a matter of chance,but his reactions,choices,morality remain his own in response to this.At the end people from each scenario-a hostess,a priest and others,gather at the airport,repeating this idea of the disaster at the end of 3 Colours Red.Whatever life we find ourselves in,things go wrong.Kieslowski's metaphysics subtly permeates the film,also themes of interconnectivity and the shifts into subjectivity which are precurors of his later films.This structurally bold film is great(his best?).Blind Chance traces the inalterable trajectory of human destiny,the malleability of fate.

This is absolutely the best Kieslowski film, and maybe one of the best highly intelectual films ever made, at the same high level as Ingmar Bergman films. So it requires from you that you THINK while you watch it. Don't try to eat while watching it at least at the beginning, otherwise you may loose your appetite. Some scenes are very hard for the stomach. The film has an incredible strength, showing brutal and honest reality, and the whole philosophy, the plot showing life like IT IS in three different versions, not as it ought to be, is really explosive!!! No surprise that it was forbidden in comunist Poland in 1981. Though the film is not political, as some reviewers commented. It shows only what might happen to a young sensitive person trying to climb the career ladder in a communist party as an example. Replace it with any social climber or careerist getting involved in an institution abusing its power to oppress opponents and dissidents. The questions arising after watching this film are very universal: is it all a coincidence, a blind chance how Witek's life rolls or not? The final scene in the film (that with the airplane) is not refered to the last of the three possibilites Witek had (as some reviewer believed), but to all of them. Watch carefully the passangers waiting for the flight: there are all of them of the three stories flying to Paris!

anything by this amazing director is worth watching. this leaves plenty to talk about as to what he is saying about political engagement and a real surprise at the end

Dobrze