Wojaczek

The Polish film-maker Lech Majewski is a master in describing artists lives. In his story for Basquiat (filmed by Julian Schnabel, 1995) he gave us an idiosyncratic glimpse of the life of Jean Michel Basquiat (and of Andy Warhol). This time he ventured at go at the national pride of alternative Poland, the poet Rafal Wojaczek, who died in 1971 at the age of 26. Wojaczek’s continual flirting with death had a great impact on later generations of Poles. Wojaczek was a rebel. He drank, fought, jumped from the roof, walked through windows and turned the gas on, all so he could feel the frontiers of life. The way in which Wojaczek (played by the beautiful Krzysztof Siwczyk) smokes a cigarette at both ends in the film without burning his mouth is a fine metaphor for his yearning for danger. Women adored him, even though he could not awaken any love for them, nor for himself. Poetry was all he lived for. Majewski: ‘Wojaczek was conscious that people in unclear times need a myth. He fed his legend with the everyday reality of Socialist Poland.’ Majewski is a poet as well as film-maker and in Wojaczek he demonstrates a great love of poetry. He does not just have many poems recited in his film, the black & white images themselves have a great poetic power, like the words of a poem.