Blind Chance shows early Kieslowski in his glorious best

Polish master Krzy-sztof Kieslowski once said that people may seem to die out of a heart attack or cancer or a car accident. But the real reason for death is that they just cannot carry on living. Blind Chance (1980), one of Kieslowski’s mid-career films revolves around a young man, Witek (Bugoslaw Linda), and the way his life turns out depending on a singular event. The film begins with a piercing scream. We don’t know what the scream means till the very end.

What follows is a series of images that sum up Witek’s early life and upbringing in Poland. Significant here are snatches of conversations with his now ailing father. Emotionally estranged from him, Witek is thrown into a dilemma when he suddenly passes away just before uttering the words, “You don’t have to…” Witek takes a break from his medical training and decides to go to Warsaw to reconsider his options. Late for his train, Witek tears through a crowded station and on to the platform, after his train. What follow are three possible ways his life could turn out.

In the first story, Witek manages to catch the train, and meets Werner, an old communist. He also nearly helps a hippy resistance worker to escape from the authorities who’ve detained him. But the hippy chooses to stay. “Sometimes, they don’t want to escape,” Werner explains. Like the rest of Eastern Europe, Poland had been under the ire of Soviet communism. With discontent at a peak, the Solidarity movement—which ultimately brought down Soviet rule-and church-supported resistance were brewing. Guided by Werner, Witek joins the party, but soon realises the ethical compromises he would have to make. In the second version, Witek misses the train, fights with a railway guard and does time at a detention camp. He meets a Church resistance worker and joins him. Witek embraces Christianity in search of faith. Kieslowski himself revealed once that all his films are about “individuals who can’t quite find their bearings, who don’t quite know how to live, who don’t really know what’s right or wrong and are desperately looking”.

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