At the DOK Leipzig fest­ival “Argen­tinian Les­son” by Woj­ciech Staroń has its world premiere. Daniel Stopa com­ments on the subtle nar­ra­tion, aston­ish­ing pic­tures and unique atmo­sphere of the film.

Woj­ciech Staroń con­firmed with his “Argen­tinian Les­son” (2011) that he belongs to the group of doc­u­ment­ari­ans who prefer the lan­guage of film rather than the styl­ist­ics of tele­vi­sion or the Inter­net. A “simple” story about friend­ship between 7-​years old Janek (the son of the dir­ector) and slightly older Marsja (a girl liv­ing in a small vil­lage in the North of Argen­tina) already in the first scenes charms with its sub­lime form. This art­icle is a com­pil­a­tion of loose notes as well as a voice of a viewer enchanted by the poet­ics of “Argen­tinian…” and thirsty for more dis­cus­sion about this mas­ter­piece.


The first minutes…

Film lan­guage tri­umphs already in the first minutes of “Argen­tinian…”. Staroń, not using com­ment­ary from the off, situ­ational dia­logues or sub­titles, trans­mits a vast amount of inform­a­tion, which is dif­fi­cult to repeat here entirely. The sequence of the jour­ney to Argen­tina, presen­ted in an expos­i­tion, is divided into three stages, set by diverse means of trans­port­a­tion: a plane, bus, and car. The dif­fer­ences between the stages are high­lighted by the con­trast between developed and technologically-​ordered urban world from which the Starońs come and the small, under­developed and depend­ing on the vagar­ies of nature “part” to which they come. The closer to the des­tin­a­tion they are, the worse the con­di­tion of the travel become — the vehicle more cramped and the road bumpier. The land­scape changes. At the begin­ning Janek with his sis­ter look out of a plane win­dow (at the time still like tour­ists) into clear sky. Later, while the Starońs travel by night by bus, they see a storm in the dis­tance — just where they are going. They cover the last part of the jour­ney by car. Rain­drops flow­ing down the wind­shield obstruct the vis­ib­il­ity, the road lacks asphalt, first, poor vil­lages appear. The increas­ing pain of the jour­ney is expressed also by the dur­a­tion of the scenes. The one on the plane is the shortest, while the scene in the car the longest. Thus, the road between the con­tin­ents fades away opposed to the long and exhaust­ing travel from Buenos Aires to Azara.

The open­ing scene is inter­est­ing. We see Marsja say­ing good­bye to her father in heavy rain. In the dis­tance, a bus passes (shots are slightly slowed down and it’s easier to notice every detail). We focus on the girl and her father (in the soundtrack, we can hear only the rain, the sound of the bus is not intro­duced). When after a while we see the scene with Janek among buses at the sta­tion and later trav­el­ling, we under­stand how subtly and intel­li­gently were pre­pared the frames present­ing an indir­ect encounter of all prot­ag­on­ists. These few minutes shows the poten­tial of “Argen­tinian …” based on the power of film lan­guage and the skill of telling a story through evid­ence only.


The encounter

The encounter of chil­dren from dif­fer­ent parts of the world is the sub­ject of “Argen­tinian …”. The word “encounter” describes also the kind of doc­u­ment­ary style close to Staroń. Firstly, the dir­ector focuses on indi­vidual por­traits, at the expense of group scenes, in which people would remain anonym­ous. This decision requires cer­tain tech­nique con­sist­ency on the part of the dir­ector. In “Argen­tinian …” there are many close-​ups show­ing the smal­lest details (faces, feet, hands). These shots, using stand­ard lenses, forced Staroń to approach the prot­ag­on­ists. All the bound­ar­ies between the doc­u­ment­arian and the por­trayed per­son broke — the encounter took place. Secondly, Staroń was not inter­ested in the form of “pure” obser­va­tion, but a sub­ject­ive per­spect­ive of a prot­ag­on­ist, uncov­er­ing the soul of a par­tic­u­lar per­son. This is evid­ent, for example, in the case of inform­a­tion about the prob­lems of Argen­tina (poverty, bad eco­nom­ical situ­ation, the fall of fam­ily val­ues). We learn that the eco­nom­ical situ­ation of Argen­tina is respons­ible for all of these prob­lems, even the fam­ily ones, from Marja’s father. Apart from these words no one speaks dir­ectly about the prob­lems of the coun­try. Des­pite this, we have the impres­sion that life in Azara stopped in the 80s, which is proved by a chain of des­ol­ate shops, which Janek passes on his way to school. The pres­ence of faded signs over the doors sug­gests that the vil­lage used to look dif­fer­ently, that people lead a bet­ter life there.

The magic of child­hood and the bit­ter taste of adoles­cence. The events presen­ted in “Argen­tinian…” take place between the world of the magic which char­ac­ter­izes child­hood and the bit­ter taste of adoles­cence, between the time of care­free play and the tra­gedies which the young­est have to face. The sequence end­ing the film remains unfor­get­table in this aspect. We see a vin­tage Ford, a sym­bol of the splend­our of Marsja’s fam­ily, mov­ing along a street. Inside there is Marsja and her fam­ily. Sud­denly, he puts his hands in the air, but the car still moves for­ward, like in a dream. The bit­ter­ness and irony of the situ­ation is clear in the fact that Ford is pulled by a tractor. The oscil­la­tion between the worlds of child’s fantasy and the grey real­ity is emphas­ised by the soundtrack — lyr­ical illus­trat­ive music is accom­pan­ied by acrid sounds of Argen­tinian rain.


The sun and rain

The rhythm of events presen­ted in “Argen­tinian…” is dic­tated by nature, two ele­ments to be pre­cise: the sun and rain. When it rains, the prot­ag­on­ists set their work aside and con­tem­plate. Staroń presents impres­sion­istic pic­tures of microele­ments from the realm of nature (a small beetle, a drop of water, an orange sit­ting in a puddle). When, on the other hand, the sun is shin­ing, the prot­ag­on­ists are act­ive — they play, build a shop, make bricks, help dur­ing the har­vest — the nar­ra­tion speeds up drastic­ally, the scenes are shorter and more dynamic. The range of col­ours changes as well. In the scenes in the rain, fog and clouded sky elim­in­ate bright col­ours; the col­ours are mono­chro­matic, like in the scene open­ing the film, when heavy rain blends together the fore­ground and the back­ground, while fog sur­rounds the stop sign and the bus passing in the dis­tance. The sun, on the other hand, allows to see all the col­ours, shapes, and dis­tances. A good example is the sequence in which chil­dren play in Marsja’s gar­age, where the sun­rays enter the smal­lest cracks of the room.


Shreds

The frame of the plot was based on events which entered the script long before the shoot­ing began: the arrival, Janek’s first day in school, the return. This sketch was filled with shots-​impressions, put­ting on hold the devel­op­ment of the plot and emphas­ising the atmo­sphere. There are scenes present­ing still land­scapes, small ele­ments of nature or prot­ag­on­ists’ faces. The mas­tery of Staroń is appar­ent in the way he joins these poetic digres­sions. Even the smal­lest particle of the plot has its own nar­ra­tion. Learn­ing to do a hand­stand, which is present through­out all the doc­u­ment­ary, is but one example. After arriv­ing to Argen­tina, Janek tries it on his own, later, when he meets Marsja, they learn together, at the end he becomes as good as an acrobat. Staroń focuses on these “simple” stor­ies show­ing their begin­ning, devel­op­ment and end, because he notices in them the title “les­son” which, step by step, moves for­ward. There are more reas­ons why the doc­u­ment­arian intro­duces these scenes. Usu­ally it is to emphas­ise the emo­tional tone of pre­ced­ing events, for example in the rhythmic col­lage after Marsja returns to her father. We watch a com­bin­a­tion of diverse scenes (a bil­liard ball fall­ing into a corner, a dan­cing crowd, meat being cut and so on) and sounds (a prayer, the voice of a priest call­ing for redemp­tion, illus­trat­ive music). This enorm­ous amount of pic­tures and sounds cor­res­ponds to pulsat­ing emo­tions of the prot­ag­on­ists. In one of the flashes, Marsja, with all her strength, throws a stone in front of her house, as if she was giv­ing vent to her anger for the fam­ily situ­ation. Another time, Staroń uses cut­aways to a com­ical effect, for instance in the scenes por­tray­ing the dir­ect­ors daugh­ter.


To be con­tin­ued…

“Argen­tinian…” is yet another after “The Siberian Les­sons” (1998) and “For a While” (2005) scene from the life of the Starońs. All bio­graph­ical doc­u­ment­ar­ies of the dir­ector are linked with a series of events from his private life — his wed­ding in “The Siberian…” and chil­dren in “For a While” and “Argen­tinian…” . These intim­ate films are joined by an indi­vidual and com­plete model of Staroń’s poet­ics char­ac­ter­ized by a sub­ject­ive form of nar­ra­tion sub­jec­ted to the emo­tions of prot­ag­on­ists and a pen­et­rat­ing ana­lysis of a sec­tion of real­ity. The doc­u­ment­arian prefers storytelling in the form of sub­lime pic­tures instead of dia­logues. Very often Staroń inter­weaves into the plot scenes in which seem­ingly noth­ing hap­pens but which cre­ate an indi­vidual mood. His shots are char­ac­ter­ised by a rarely found care for the treat­ment of col­our. This comes from the fact that the doc­u­ment­arian makes his works on film. Work­ing with a film, lim­it­ing sig­ni­fic­antly the foot­age, and exclud­ing a sim­ul­tan­eous record­ing of pic­ture and sound influ­ences the lan­guage of Staroń.


This mod­est essay does not por­tray even a smal­lest bit of the skill found in “Argen­tinian…”. The works of Woj­ciech Staroń, though coher­ent, are con­stantly evolving. We can see a cer­tain con­tinu­ation, but not a mind­less copy­ing of pre­vi­ous ideas. And this con­tinu­ation gives us hope for future “les­sons” of the dir­ector.


Daniel Stopa


(Trans­la­tion by Olga Brawańska)
(17.10.2011)