Tonight at CSUN we saw "A Chronicle Of Amorous Accidents" (Polish title "Kronika Wypadkow Milosnych") by Andrzej Wajda, released in 1986. This is Wajda once again going back to his Arthouse style, as opposed to the Epic Political Stories he is most known for. "Chronicle" is the third such artsy film we have seen, along with "The Birch Wood" (one of my favorites) and "The Maids Of Wilko". All of his art films take place in the countryside, this time near what is now Lithuania, and what a gorgeous landscape it is, an endless green meadow cut through by a wide, glassy river. The large houses surrounding the meadow are inhabited once again by families belonging to different factions of Poland's former nobility. The houses would signify wealth in any era, in any country, but the liquid wealth of these families is mostly gone. What they have left is their property, and enough money to live on. Their privileged attitudes are still intact though, and they still believe that their idyllic lifestyle is immune to outside forces.
The film is set in 1939 and rumors of war are spoken of and then summarily dismissed, by the young people who make up the movie's main characters. The protagonist is a high school senior who will soon be going off to college to study medicine. But he is soon distracted from his studies by a chance meeting with a girl who lives nearby. She is only in middle school but is precocious, i.e. sophisticated beyond her years, and our young doctor-to-be forgets all about his studies as he falls head over heels for her. Meanwhile, his more pedestrian pals try to entice him to join in at parties continuously thrown by two sisters who also live by the riverside. These ladies are in their 30s and languid. They drink and take "potions" and seem to have only two things on their mind : sex and drama. They are jaded. Our young med student goes to these parties to humor his male friends, but he feels alienated and drawn back to the school girl with whom he has fallen in love.
The main problem for them is that neither his mother nor her father approve of the relationship, and in fact both disapprove very strongly. But they have idealised their love and cannot be stopped from seeing one another.
Two other factors are present, one of them a ghost, in the form of a man from the present (1986). This character is played by the gentleman who wrote the book from which the script was adapted, and his "ghost" represents a former resident of the riverside village who died sometime after the war (WW2), and who has come back to search for the fond memories of his childhood. He remembers the idyllic setting of the green countryside by the river, and the easy way of life before the bombs hit. Because he is from the future, he knows what will happen to our couple, and he tells this to the med student, though he adds that he cannot reveal his knowledge. They must discover their futures for themselves.
Though they are being pulled apart by their parents, and in the medical student's case distracted by his friends, they are able to maintain the pull they are feeling toward one another, and - as the reality of the coming war can no longer be denied or shuffled off, the two decide to go for broke.
That is as much as I can tell you about this film. It has been hailed by critics as the best movie ever made about the lead-up to the start of WW2 in Poland. That is a narrow category, I know, but it may be true. I think it is most accurate to say that "A Chronicle Of Amorous Accidents" is one of the most beautiful love stories you will ever see, not only for the portrayal of love's innocence, absent of any cynicism or irony (just full on heart-on-sleeve love), but also for Wadja's decision to risk that love, in order to see if it will triumph over the World War. See the movie to find out what happens!
The audience at the Cinematheque was blown away by this film, as was I, and I give it not only my highest rating but also a special appraisal because it dares to go all the way in it's depiction of the power of love, which has always been a very important matter for me.
It is my favorite Wajda movie so far, and that is really saying something.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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