Piotr Szulkin

The War of the Worlds: Next Century

I've been gorging on Vinegar Syndrome's two disc set of four science fiction films that the unheralded Polish director and writer Piotr Szulkin released, or tried to, in the 1980s. The discs have only a few special features, but the color transfer and image quality of the films are superlative. This is key, as they prove Szulkin, who trained as a painter, was a master at using color expressively. The palette of his first two features, 1980's Golem and 1981's The War of the Worlds: Next Century, alternate censorious reds with bilious greens to create queasy nightmare realms. Golem, his first feature, is a loose reworking of the Jewish fable. In all of Szulkin's scripts, the basis of the story and its genre trappings serve as a springboard for films that addresses life under totalitarianism. The protagonist of Golem, Pernat (Marek Walczewski), exists in a confused condition because he is the result of experimental gene splicing by the powers that be. Pernat wanders in an absurdist world of grotesqueries: murky tenement corridors, interrogation rooms, and doll repair stores. The tone is absurdist and slightly funny if one laughs at Dostoyevsky and Kafka. Szulkin shares the black humor of many 20th Century Poles: Polanski, Zulawski, Has, Kosiński, Gombrowicz, Lem.

Marek Walczewski negotiates the nightmare realm of Golem

Golem is an impressive first film with many memorable moments and images. It meanders a bit too much, but that is the price you have to pay when your protagonist doesn't even know his identity. Szulkin's next feature, The War of the Worlds..., is more effective, chiefly because it has a more extroverted protagonist, television commentator Iron Idem. Roman Wilhelmi's terrific performance as Idem gives the film a sharper focus than Golem which wanders down too many dark corridors. This time Szulkin borrows very little, except for the theme of vampirism, from his source, H.G. Wells' novel. The Martians arrive in Szulkin's film in 1999 and proceed to conquor us humble earthling not by zapping us with a death ray, but by media manipulation. Iron Idem is part of the media machinery that the Martians take charge of. He dons a goofy mod wig on air, to appeal to the youth I suppose, and is forced to extol the virtues of our visitors. They establish a Gestapo and force citizens to donate blood to their overlords. The film gives a throwback visual feel to the villains, similar to Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 or Cocteau's Orphée, hearkening back to Poland's experience with the Nazis. Despite this, the Polish authorities could not help but link the film's allegory to its own regime. The film was suppressed and only given a limited release in 1983.

The man known as Iron eventually rebels and is harshly punished. When the Martians leave, things get even worse as he is branded a collaborator and executed. Wilhelmi's deft performance saves the film from teetering into hysteria. Even when he is sweating bullets and cursing his enemies, Wilhelmi provides a believable and empathic locus for a movie which, from its first shot (see above), revels in its portrait of subjugation. The War of the World... flirts with overstatement, but it is never dull. On both Golem and The War of the World..., Szulkin utilizes the rock music and screen presence of Jozef Skrzek, founder of Polish favorites,  the Silesian Blues Band. The fabricated music group "the Instant Glue" offers up their "Ode to Martian" for the youth in the film. The presence of the rock interludes display how art, no matter how rebellious, can be co-opted by authoritarian regimes eager to lull the masses. Skrzek is still with us today and provided the striking scores for a number of Lech Majewski's films.

If anything, the four decades that have elapsed since The War of the Worlds... was filmed have given the flick and its portrait of media malfeasance added resonance. Despite its lack of Hollywood production values, The War of the Worlds... is a more nuanced and thoughtful condemnation of viewer complacency than Network. Szulkin's next film, 1985's O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, is set in an underground bunker after a nuclear holocaust. The protagonist, Soft (Jerzy Stuhr), is an apparatchik helping to oversee the care and feeding of nearly a thousand survivors. Hygiene and other vestiges of civilization have disappeared. The cave dwellers have regressed to a non-verbal, pre-humanoid state. The film's title makes plain the devolution into baby talk babble. Literacy has disappeared, we later learn that this is partly because all paper and pulp have been turned into foodstuffs; soylent green is books! The masses hold out for the promise of an "ark" to deliver them from their misery. This ark had been the invention of the powers that be, but is disavowed by them now. The masses don't believe what they are told, mirroring the climate of 1985 Poland. Soft and his fellow elite fall into despair or madness. O-Bi, O-Ba is shot in a monochromatic blue-green soup. It has the feel of monotony, but that is the point. Szulkin's camera heightens our sense of confinement. Szulkin starts with a circle dolly around Soft's cramped quarters. Steadicam shots whizz through the corridors and shambolic rooms, but there is, despite the ambivalent ending, no exit.

The monochromatic blue-green soup of O-Bi, O-Ba...

The final title in the Vinegar Syndrome collection, titled Piotr Szulkin's Apocalypse Tetralogy, is 1986's satire GA-GA: Glory to the Heroes. The opening combines the themes of confinement and brutality found previously as we witness a half-assed farewell ceremony aboard a space based prison. The protagonist, Scope (Daniel Olbrychski), has won the honor of being sent into space aboard a rocket, a mission the authorities view as tantamount to a death sentence. Happily, Scope lands on an inhabited planet named Australia 458 which looks very much like midwinter Poland. Scope is greeted by a government toady (Jerzy Stuhr again) who caters to Scope, greeted everywhere as a hero. However, Scope soon learns that the 'hero' is doomed to be sacrificed in excruciating fashion at a public spectacle. Scope is pacifistic, his only crime is 'disobedience', but must take up arms to free himself and an underaged hooker with a heart of brass. GA-GA... is Szulkin's most audience pleasing and straightforward film, chiefly a satire of authoritarianism. The film's rehearsal for Scope's sacrifice spectacle, a parody of state socialist pageants, is a little too Felliniesque to my mind, but GA-GA is fairly riotous if you have a taste for digital amputation humor.

Daniel Olbrychski in Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes

As Scope, Daniel Olbrychski deftly underplays the taciturn hero, a fixed focal point in the film to the surrounding madness. He functions like Eastwood in an action film or Michael Biehn in The Terminator, a flick whose conventions GA-GA parodies. One thing that strikes me about Szulkin's films are the consistently high levels of the performances. He was able to assemble a stock company of superb performers. Not only Stuhr, but Marek Walczewski returns for GA-GA.... Recurrently, across these four films, we encounter Mariusz Dmochowski (always a heavy), Krystyna Janda (a muse), and Krzysztof Majchrzak; and are glad we did. Szulkin had a minor career, but these films show intimations of a major talent. Vinegar Syndrome deserves credit for bringing him to the attention of American cinéastes.

Piotr Szulkin 1950-2018