September 11, 2008


By Kjetil Lismoen

Tricks is one of the most beautiful cinema adventures of this autumn. The flying pigeons and squalid streets in the film have their characteristic poetry, where it's impossible to meet someone with a cell phone. 'It's my way of telling the story,' says the award-winning director Andrzej Jakimowski, 'I don't know any other.'

The Polish original title of the second film by Jakimowski, which enchanted the world of international festivals last year, is Tricks. However, the movie now playing in Norwegian movie theatres is not the 'feelgood' kind, vigorously adulating the cinema public. This is a quiet and beautiful film, demanding pretty much attention to details and trifles. Yet, at the same time, towards the end of the movie Jakimowski displays a Hitchcock-like sense of suspense.

The story is seemingly simple. The boy, living with his mother and sister, wanders around a Polish small town, charming the surroundings by performing trifling magic tricks and dreaming that his father will show up someday. It is the way in which Jakimowski tells about this small, confined universe that makes the film unique. Here, the flying pigeons, passing trains and squalid streets are filled with mysterious poetry, while the light turns the dull and sad town into a place we are reluctant to leave. Jakimowski has dedicated his film to his sister and tells Rushprint that the story has some references to his own life.

'There are certain affinities between the protagonist, the young boy Stefek, and my own childhood experiences. I had an elder sister, too, who took care of me for her teenage years. However, Stefek's quest for his father has nothing to do with my life, being a fabrication - just like many other things in the film.'

As far as the style of the film is concerned, i.e. the way the story is told, Jakimowski thinks that it is hard to say anything particular about it. He only points out it's the only way he can tell his stories. 'It's just my way of telling film stories, I don't know any other. I haven't tried to deliberately create a poetic or 'magic' world. The reason why is that I attach more weight to what is underlying a story than to whatever is too explicit.'

Can you tell us something about the filming location? The small town may look depressing and squalid, yet at the same time it is shown in a beautiful way.
'The filming took place in a small town in the south of Poland. The town had been a mining settlement for a long time, but today the mines are long closed down, that's why there are many jobless people there. Its unique feature is the architecture which is not typically Polish, being to some extent characteristic of the German architecture. A poor town like this may obviously appear to be depressing. However, if we take interest in people, we'll always find beauty and persons with a good attitude to life, no matter how wretched the conditions are.

Damian Ul, playing the leading part, seems to be a natural born talent. How did you find him?
'We found him by accident. He came to the casting session at the eleventh hour. We had visited a number of small towns in Poland in order to find the right lead, we had tested more than 400 school-age boys, finding no one to please us. I was quite desperate as the filming was about to begin soon. Then we went to that town - the filming location, actually to choose the last filmsets, and there we found him! Damian is very much like the boy he plays in the film - he kept hanging around the streets, doing nothing special. He is friends with the streets and surroundings the movie features, because that's where he has grown up. We can even see his school in many of the scenes. Ewelina Walendziak, his film 'sister', has never been in a movie, either. She has no film experience or education. How do you instruct such amateurs? What challenges does it present?
'I don't like to instruct. I don't believe that I can tell them what to do. Instead, by creating a right situation I try to make them respond naturally so that they can be themselves in front of the camera. Damian, who plays the boy, got to know what we wanted from him very quickly; he is very intelligent and efficient. I didn't ask him to do anything in particular, but he understood the situation, also because his own life was so similar to the one we wanted to show in the film. He lived with his mother and sister, too, and his father - just like in the movie - moved out to another place. So, the difference wasn't for him as big as we thought.

Although your film is about a child, it features no television, computer games or cell phones - the devices children and youth surround themselves with so readily.
'I didn't want to introduce this kind of 'jammers', as it's not this kind of movie. My main message for Damian was that he shouldn't pretend to be playing in a film. That was decisive. I didn't want him to behave and speak like other children we see in some movies and TV serials. And he latched onto it fast - with time, I actually didn't need to say anything to him during the filming, I just put him in different situations.

The atmosphere of the film is very light, but simultaneously you succeed in keeping us in suspense while we are watching whether the boy will manage to get his parents together again. Specifically, the final scene arouses strong emotions.
'I'm glad to hear this. Since that was the idea - to build up suspense before the decisive moment.'

'Tricks' has won a number of Golden Lions, the Polish film award. How did the Polish public respond to the film?
'Pretty well. Though it was far from any mega success, for the art houses, 180,000 viewers is a very good audience. We didn't expect it. After all, it's not a film for everyone, although I'm still surprised that entire families go to see it. So perhaps it has a message which goes beyond reception of the traditional art house public.

Tricks is premiered this Friday. The show will be preceded by the screening of the Norwegian short film Varde.

online version:
http://www.rushprint.no/index.asp?section=news&newsId=1486