Tonight at CSUN we saw "The Birch Wood"(1970) by Andrzej Wajda, an artsy, heavily stylized movie that is far removed from his early political thrillers that we saw at the beginning of the retrospective. The story is set in the Polish countryside in the early 1930s. A man, a forest ranger, lives in an old cabin in the woods, surrounded by a vast green field on one side, and a multitude of birch trees on the other. He is about 30 years old, but widowed and left to raise his young daughter on his own. She is perhaps six or seven. One day, a visitor arrives, riding on the back of a horsecart. It is the man's younger brother, back in Poland after a sojourn in a Swiss sanitarium (not a nuthouse but a health spa). The brother is in the final stages of tuberculosis, and his Swiss doctor has recommended fresh forest air to maintain his health as long as possible.
The visiting tubercular brother is ill and gaunt, but he is also very handsome. With his white/yellow pallor, and his shadowed eyes and boxy suit, he resembles a vampire. Professor Tim pointed this out before the movie started, and his assessment was on target. The sick brother is relentlessly optimistic, even in his illness, and his cheerfulness irritates his forest ranger brother, who is grim and always on the verge of anger. A point of contention arises when the sick brother, who is a pianist, asks to buy a piano from a woman in a nearby village. She is bedridden and also dying; he convinces her that he will slightly outlast her, and to therefore let the piano expire with him. Yeah, it's a weird movie. 100% Art Film.
There is a farm at the other end of the green field. A peasant woman toils there. She is plain but sensuous, and she attracts the sickly vampire brother, who gains robust energy when he is around her. But his attraction to the peasant woman bothers his taciturn forest ranger brother, who is also attracted to the woman but represses his feelings. Making matters worse, the peasant woman is beholden to the man whose land she tends, a gigantic macho lumberjack who picks up and tosses tree trunks with his bare hands. This man wants to marry her, and she has little choice but to agree.
And then to make matters even worse, it turns out that the widowed forest ranger's deceased wife was in love with the gigantic macho man, and not only that but his little daughter also likes the man better than she likes her own Dad, who does nothing but brood.
It's all messed up, I tell ya, but the thing is, that this story is not really the draw of the movie. The romantic and sexual jealousies all seem like a back story to the up front theme of the dying, life loving brother, who looks like he should have the lead in the next "Twilight" movie. The actor chosen for the role has a look and an expressiveness that pulls you in to his emotional center, so that you experience the entire story from his point of view. He is filmed largely in close up, lit by colored lights of green and purple. Professor Tim also quipped that "The Birch Wood" could be considered a cross between Tarkovsky and Hammer Horror, and in the scenes with the dying brother it certainly has that Hammer Studios look, of the colors they like to use.
We had a treat after the movie, a Q&A session with a woman named Alina Szpak. She was in attendance tonight, and it turned out that she was in the movie, playing the part of the bedridden piano owner who reluctantly sells it to the tuburcular brother.
She is 48 years older now, and lives in Los Angeles, having made for herself a career in film, mostly as an independent producer. She told quite a story of working on "The Birch Wood" almost a half century ago, with director Andrzej Wajda and the actors and crew. She also talked about how she came to learn the technical details of filmmaking in Poland and Russia, where she earned her first assistant director credential. Her story was pretty amazing, because - though she is not a well-known person in the cinematic world - she has nonetheless had an ongoing film career since 1970, which began in Poland under Wajda and led all the way to L.A., and here she was at CSUN tonight, talking about the film we had just seen, which she had appeared in, a really weird but excellent Art Film that many people, like me, would never have heard of if it hadn't been for Professor Tim and our Wajda Retrospective that we are currently reviewing.
So you can file this one under the categories of "You Never Know What Is Gonna Happen In Life" and "Keep An Open Mind And Go Where Life Takes You".
And of course plan and study and be professional. I always figure that stuff goes without saying, which is why I never mention it. Being on top of your game is axiomatic. Alina Szpak is on top of her game, or else she would not have made it as far as she has.
But in hearing her talk about her life this evening, it is clear she has kept an open mind and open agenda as to where life might take her.
Her story is exactly what I mean when I write about projecting your intent out into the Universe.
As mere words, it sounds like a lot of New Age claptrap, I admit. And I can't stand New Age, as you know.
But when you keep your intent inside and focus inward, and when you cherish what you know about yourself at a most personal level, and when you promote what you want to accomplish in life (what you feel is best about yourself, the Real You), and when you promote it not only to human colleagues but much more importantly draw your focus outward from your inner self toward the sky, and to God, then you will open up a path that will lead you towards your true destiny. That sounds like New Age baloney too, because of the words I just used. But it isn't, and the proof is in believing it.
The thing is that you were meant to be You. You were not meant to follow in lockstep to the plans of other humans. Not at all. And you know this. You know it in your center, in your core.
You know it in your soul, when you silently talk to yourself without even realising you are doing so.
You were meant to be You. God made you that way. I'll shut up now. I hate it when I sound New Age, but I've gotta promote the truth of the soul.
"The Birch Wood" owes it's artistic success in large part because of the performance of Olgierd Lukaszewicz, as the happy dying vampire. He too has gone on to a life long film career, mainly in Poland, but........
It again goes to show that if you remain true to your art, and more importantly true to your life, you can't go wrong.
See you in the morning. xxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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