The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 87
sonalized curriculum vitae that round out a life, rather than the
epitaph, or any more expressive summary.
Because of the close-ups of hands recording facts and exchanging
documents, Urzad seems to somehow anticipate Kieslowski's
legendary choice to "escape from documentary" as well as his subsequent
departure from filmmaking altogether. In Danusia Stok's
interview, Kieslowski relates:
There was a necessity, a need – which was very exciting for us –
to describe the world. We tried to describe this world and it was
fascinating to describe something that hadn't been described yet.
It's a feeling of bringing something to life... if we start describing
something, we bring it to life...
[But] Not everything can be described. That's the documentary's
great problem. It catches itself as if in its own trap. 1
Urzad is very much a film about the mundane, the everyday, and
recreates this with Kieslowski's described vitality. But, if the film is
criticizing all the bureaucratic records for failing to adequately contain
or express, with their "yes" or "no" answers, the complexity of
an individual's life, is the film saying anything about the success of
documentary film itself in terms of measuring up to this task? Is this
the "trap" in Urzad? Unlike the clerk's questionnaire, it is not the prerogative
of this film to sum up anyone's life, but since the film explicitly
challenges the assumption that these shelves full of file folders
are effective repositories for capturing a life lived, what medium
is it offering as an alternative? It seems to me, particularly in light of
Kieslowski's later remarks, that there is something in Urzad that is
suggestive of this implicit evaluation of film's potential as a medium
to rise to such a challenge. In a sense, after Urzad, Kieslowski spent
two careers, in Poland and then in France, trying to answer this
question.
1 Danusia Stok, ed. Kieslowski on Kieslowski (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), pp. 54-55, 86.