• Zanussi’s Family Life (1971) screened at the Chicago International Film Festival this past weekend.

The great Polish writer-director Krzysztof Zanussi was in town this past weekend to introduce two of his movies at the Chicago International Film Festival: his 1971 breakthrough Family Life and his latest feature, Foreign Body. (The latter screens again on Saturday at noon.) As I wrote in May when three of his major works—The Illumination (1973), Camouflage (1977), and The Constant Factor (1980)— came through town as part of a touring series of Polish classics, Zanussi is one of the smartest people ever to make movies. He had already earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a PhD in physics before he taught himself filmmaking in his mid-20s. Since the release of his debut feature, The Structure of Crystal, in 1969, he’s written and directed several dozen features and shorts, worked frequently in theater, and taught at the top Polish film academies. (I also learned the other day that he’s fluent in five languages.) I was fully prepared to be intimidated by Zanussi before I interviewed him the other day. To my surprise, I found him exceedingly gracious—in fact he often speaks quietly and with his head down, as though trying to keep himself from dominating the conversation. He readily acknowledged what he perceives as flaws in his work and the limitations of his knowledge. When I told him that my wife Kat and I count The Constant Factor among our favorite films, Zanussi immediately proposed that we come visit him in Warsaw. In the second part of our conversation, which I’ll post tomorrow, the director opened up about his relationships with actress Leslie Caron and the late Krzysztof Kieslowski. To start, we touched on the legacy of Illumination and The Constant Factor, the connection between scientific and humanistic thinking, and the prospect of immortality.

You’ve produced an extraordinary number of films. Do you feel motivated by this belief that your work will not endure?

When did you get involved in theater?

  • The Constant Factor

I did. Do you see it as an example of this resignation you talk about?

Yes. I wanted to correct some things in the film, based on what I’d read in a review. You know, we always say that critics are dangerous creatures and they influence our lives, and so on and so on. But Constant Factor got almost unanimously very good reviews. It got a very severe review from just one of the most important critics [in Poland]—a big writer and kind of friend. He reproached me for something I only understood years later: that my protagonist—who is, of course, a projection of myself—sometimes goes for ideas more than for people. In his intransigence, he becomes not human anymore.

  • Oliver Abels/Wikimedia Commons
  • Zanussi at the GoEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden, earlier this year

You know, the guy who played the lead [Stanislaw Latallo] died in the HImalayas . . .