20/09/2017

Hostages to ideals

A boy scout troop sets out to camp together with boys from juvie in an initiative to create equal opportunities and reintegrate the offenders. The project seems like a failure right from the start; the two groups are constantly butting heads. When a scout dies in mysterious circumstances, the troop leader doesn’t believe it was an accident. Determined to investigate the case in secret, he imposes harsh regulations in the camp in order to discover the truth and track down the guilty party. His search for truth, however, leads to the accidental death of the boy he suspects of murder. Robert Gliński tells Anna Rączkowska about Be Prepared, which is launching at the Gdynia festival.

Anna Rączkowska: Why are your protagonists boy scouts?

Robert Gliński: Because it’s a cohesive social group. Scouts have their own world, their own rules, morality, internal discipline, hierarchy… They fashion their environment according to their own values, striving to achieve their goals at any cost as they believe in the righteousness of their purpose. It’s a monolithic society. My movie shows this monolith cracking despite the group’s cohesion, readiness, and focus on self, tasks, and goals – because life itself, its dangers and unexpected events, can cause the world of our values to fall apart. This is the message of Be Prepared. I came up with the idea for this movie on my own, but my student co-wrote the script with me.

Scouts represent clear values…

Yes, the division between good and evil is very clear in this world. The young protagonists of my film want to base their lives and the microcosm of their scouting camp on these clear values. However, unexpected events shatter their little world; the laws they assumed for themselves are no longer in force. These young scouts just can’t grasp this fact.

Did you visit real scout camps to gather reference material? 

Of course. I went to camps, took notes, watched the scouts… I observed. The closed enclave of a scout camp lets us closely watch the behaviors of young people as they build their own country, dictate laws, and determine values. A tragic accident happened at one of the scout camps I went to as a teen in the 1960s – a patrol leader killed another boy by hitting him on the head with a rock. The killer’s motives were entirely banal. Why did that happen? Whose fault was it? I still don’t know… Anyway, I’d like to add that the scouts depicted in this film belong to a fictional organization ZHI and not to the real-world Polish scouting organizations ZHP and ZHR.

All the scout camps I went to were mixed. Despite the occasional night marches or games, my memories of camping life are idyllic. 

Most of today’s camps are segregated, all-girls or all-boys. And they’re not idyllic at all. The nighttime full-dress pack drill was based on true events. I’ve seen this in several places; it looked exactly like boot camp training. Patrol supervisors tended to bully these young boys. Even small infractions could be punished with a pack drill – not tidying up the tent, not squaring the cot away properly… After a few infractions the patrol supervisor would fly into a rage and rouse everyone for a nighttime drill.

I noticed an interesting correlation at scouting camps: strict discipline, high demands, military assemblies, and physical and mental pressure all served to further strengthen the scouts’ “double lives”.

Just like in real life! Did troop leaders confiscate mobile phones for the duration of the camp? 

Yes, mobiles and laptops were prohibited at most camps. Even if a scout managed to smuggle one in, keeping it charged was an issue – he couldn’t charge it openly in a location that had power. In several cases scouts had asked if they could use my car charger in secret. You just can’t eradicate the underground.

Did you make up the scene of scouts replicating the graves of heroes of the Warsaw Uprising?

You couldn’t make that up! I saw it at one of the camps. You’d think that summer holidays would be a time of fun and happiness – and then you see a group of young people building model graves, earthen mounds topped with crosses decorated with photos of the fighters.

What for?

To learn history and gain respect for national heroes, participants of the Warsaw Uprising, portrayed in Stones on the Barricade. These replicas might have been inspired by the graves of the Zośka battalion at the Powązki military cemetery in Warsaw.

Chanting “Glory to the heroes” and drinking vodka on the bus ride to the camp… When I was a scout, we took the rules against drinking and smoking very seriously. 

Really? Back in my scouting times we took every opportunity to drink cheap plonk purchased at the village near our camp. We did all sorts of things. I recall going to nearby villages to talk to the locals about their daily lives. Each troop would pick a house, chat with the farmers, learn about the history of the village… And after a few interviews the whole troop would hit up the village store for beer. In uniform, no less! We were in grade school and the shopkeepers had no problem selling us beer.

Even the author of Stones for the Barricade, Aleksander Kamiński, now considered the model scoutmaster, used to have a bottle of wine with his lunch – he wrote about it in his memoirs. Of course no one mentions that today, because drinking wine doesn’t fit the idealized image of “the great scoutmaster”.

Two murders take place at the camp. Why did you choose such a radical plot device?

Because I wanted to make a bold statement. I see young people living in the grip of powerful values as held hostage by their ideals. The boy who turns out to be the killer says he murdered “these people” because they didn’t believe in the world he believed in; “these people” endangered his internalized ideals. We don’t always try to exterminate our opponents in real life, but a bold stroke like this often works out well in movies.

You frequently make movies about young people and the world of their values. Why?

In Hi, Tereska I depicted a generation of lonely, passive young people who don’t believe in anything. Their stance is rooted in Socialism, the previous era; these young people wait to see what life will bring, they’re passive, aimless, devoid of energy. Hi, Tereska showed the loneliness that stems from passivity. My later film Piggies portrayed a diametrically opposite situation – youths rushing to get rich and start their careers as fast as possible in pursuit of status symbols like cars, mobiles, and leather jackets. They start working, buying, selling, making money… And my newest production, Be Prepared, shows that the “time of the golden calf,” or money as the ultimate value, has passed. Young people are seeking something greater than cash: they need timeless spiritual values. I think this is pretty common nowadays. Money doesn’t matter that much, but faith is quintessential. Faith in God, in Buddha, in your local footie team… Young people are seeking ideals. They define themselves as leftists, liberals, or right-wingers. The label isn’t as important as faith in some set of values. This is the world I recreated in my movie. However, I also wanted to show that all faith requires reflection, distance, openness to the idea that not everything might be what it seems and we can’t be always right.

Do you want your film to be viewed as a metaphor? Should we consider it a commentary on what is currently presented in Poland as the sole and mandatory set of values?

My film depicts all externally enforced values as artificial and untrue, impossible to live by. The leading man sees the danger and seeks the truth – who’s the killer, how did it all happen? Sadly, philosophers say there’s more than one kind of truth. No truth is universal, it’s all relative – and I think that’s the truth! (Gliński laughs.) Attitudes are relative to circumstances. Take the Ten Commandments – the fifth says “Thou shalt not kill”, which seems clear and obvious, but in times of war and occupation it turns out that thou shalt grab a gun and kill thy enemy. You could become a hero, they might even build a statue in your honor! Nowadays no one mentions the fact that these discussions were commonplace in the Grey Ranks over the first years of the occupation. Should young people fight and kill? The majority of the Home Army and Catholic Church authorities thought that young people should be protected from the depravity that always accompanies killing. But the Warsaw Uprising was all about killing Germans.

Why do you like narrating stories through young protagonists?

Many things look bolder on young protagonists. Young people have very distinct attitudes toward reality, and these attitudes also tend to shift. Cinema greatly values these shifts, because they have dramatic power. Young people change in powerful and obvious ways, while older folks often remain distant, calmer, more resistant to transformation. An older protagonist would carefully consider every option and angle before saying something or taking a stance. Young people are quick to say “I love…” and even quicker to  say “I hate…”.

Where do you go to watch young people? 

I’m a film school teacher and frequently receive invitations to show my movies at high schools. We mostly talk about cinema, but it still lets me notice what teens are like and what they think about various issues. They’re nothing like earlier generations of young people, but I couldn’t say if that’s better or worse. They have an easier time absorbing information from all over the world, but their interpretations of a given event are wildly divergent – because they read opinions from various sources and it affects their attitude.

Is there anything that fascinates or attracts you about young people today?

Their pursuit of spiritual values. The earlier attitude of “cash and career at any cost” was understandable, but somewhat crass. Teens seemed infected with consumerism and focused on instant gratification. Now I’m amazed by the popularity of volunteering – young people devote themselves to activities that don’t pay.

You’re a careful observer. You want to document reality. Where does this prosocial streak come from?

Making movies is something of a mission to me – I want to talk about the times we live in, to show what’s right outside our window, because in five years’ time the view from our window will be different. Everything will change: the times, the people, the attitudes… That’s why it’s important to describe things the way they are right now.

Because nothing is as interesting as the reality?

Because panta rhei and everything is going to change. All versions of reality are interesting and loaded with dramatic tension. Present times always give rise to truth – truth about this place and time. Truth is a vehicle for emotions, and emotions are good to have in a movie. Hi, Tereska brought the audiences to tears and so did Benek, even though that movie had fairly low viewership.

The present times are a great subject. I’m grateful for the lessons of Wojciech Has, an excellent director who made very creative movies. Take The Hourglass Sanatorium or The Saragossa Manuscript – these works were extremely imaginative and poetic. Has, the eminent cinematic painter, used to say: “What’s most important is here and now. Buy a notebook and write down your observations. Anything happens – write it down, read something interesting in the paper – write it down. This will be your source material.”

Just like reporters.

Being into the literary greats like Szulc and Gombrowicz, we sort of didn’t care about this at the time. We wanted to make ambitious, fanciful works. One of my buddies used to shoot Witkacy shorts all the time – they were totally cool, but devoid of truth and emotion. I used to drift high in the clouds as well. In time, however, we found out that Has was right. There is power, energy, and emotions in things happening right now – and in contemporary protagonists.

Interview by Anna Rączkowska (translated by Dariusz Kołaczkowski)

 

click here to read more about Robert Gliński

 

Screenings of Be Prepared at the Gdynia festival:

September 21, 2017 (Thursday)

8:30 Multikino – screening room 2

8:30 Gdynia Film Centre – screening room Warszawa

8:30 Gdynia Film Centre – screening room Goplana

15:30 The Musical Theatre – Large Stage

17:45 Multikino – screening room 7

17:45 Multikino – screening room 6

20:40 Multikino – screening room 3

20:40 Gdynia Film Centre – screening room Warszawa

September 22, 2017 (Friday)

9:00 Multikino – screening room 3

11:00 Multikino – screening room 6

22:40 Multikino – screening room 2

September 23, 2017 (Saturday)

16:00 Gdynia Film Centre – screening room Warszawa

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