Holland's later films reveal a fascination with the metaphysical, alongside her unflagging interest in the existential dimension of life. She first displayed what critics have called the 'metaphysical touch' in the film, Olivier Olivier (1992) and The Third Miracle (1999), while Julie Walking Home (2002). She explores religious attitudes and supernatural, rationally inexplicable phenomena. These interests were also evident when she directed Szymon Ansky's The Dybbuk for the Polish TV theatre.
Holland's new film language, her new style of talking about reality, had clearly turned towards popular cinema. Polish audiences were taken by surprise by her feature To Kill a Priest (1988). The story, set in Poland during martial law, recounts the notorious assassination of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, but Holland's depiction of Polish society and the psychological analyses of the protagonists were regarded by some critics as clichés derivative of 'thriller poetics'. This view is not shared by Mariola Jankun-Dopartowa, who believes that the kitsch-like artificiality of the film is intentional and that there are two layers in To Kill a Priest: one a gloomy psychological drama, the other an analysis of how political and religious kitsch is born.
Holland's subsequent films, such as Total Eclipse (1995), Washington Square (1997), The Third Miracle (1999), Shot in the Heart (2001), and the romantic period drama, Copying Beethoven (2006), left many critics sceptical of her populist approach. Jankun-Dopartowa, however, sees this language as the consistent articulation of an intention. She says, for instance, that while Holland uses the language of kitsch in Total Eclipse, she treats it like Kundera, for whom kitsch is an 'existential category' (a destructive one, too). What's more, she argues that 'the aesthetics of kitsch proposed by Holland in this movie achieves perfection', and should please both a mass audience and more discriminating viewers, though, admittedly, 'sometimes both are disappointed'.
There is no doubt that Holland began this risky approach to reach a wider audience. She confessed in an interview for Rzeczpospolita that she wants to make 'cinema of the middle', understandable to the average spectator, yet 'with a certain scale of complexity and an intellectual message'.
In 2004, Holland directed episode eight of the third season of the hugely popular HBO series, The Wire. She returned to direct two more episodes in 2006 and 2008. In 2007, together with her daughter and sister, she directed the Polish political drama, Ekipa.
Janosik
Holland also collaborated with her daughter Kasia Adamik on Janosik: The True Story. Production on the story of the Polish Robin Hood began in the autumn of 2002, but soon had to be suspended for lack of funding. Agnieszka Holland and her daughter were able to return to the project after six years and the film was released in 2009. The film is set in the years 1711-1713. The Slovak Juraj Janosik took part in the anti-Habsburg uprising of Francis II Rakoczi, and after it fell he was conscripted into the imperial army. When he was on guard duty, he helped Tomas Uhorcik escape from prison; allegedly the man repaid him by buying him out of the army and letting him join his band of robbers. The highland robber was remembered differently in folk tales - as an insurgent with Rakoczi and a rejected lover who went into the mountains to seek death, but rediscovered himself in the role of a robber. Persecuted by hajduk soldiers, he robbed people but didn't keep the loot for himself - on the contrary, he gave it to the poor.
Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik's film is a search for the golden mean. Yes, it tries to set the events in chronological order, but also stops short of stripping its main character of his romantic aura. In Václav Jiráček's interpretation Janosik is a young man (the court documents prove he was born in 1688), aware he is different - inclined to lead a life of solitude, with a different sensitivity than the people around him, contrary to the highland tradition of the time - even averse to robbery.
HBO'S New Orleans after Katrina
In 2010 Agnieszka Holland was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work directing the pilot episode of the HBO series Treme, which revisists New Orleans after Katrina. As Holland told Karen Kemmerle of the Tribeca Film Festival,
For me, television is just a medium. It isn’t radically different from film, though it has different stylistic possibilities and limitations, but it is also something new. I started to see that in the States, well-written and well-produced television shows were becoming far more interesting than the cinema. With challenging materials from HBO, Showtime, and now, AMC, it was very natural for me to want to work on their projects.
But I’m very particular. I only do one or two episodes a year, because it gives me some kind of energy, you know? I like being able to explore the realities of people and places that are not like mine, like the inner city of Baltimore or New Orleans after Katrina.
In Darkness
In March 2010, she began filming In Darkness, a film based on Robert Marshall's heroic tale of surviving the Holocaust entitled In the Sewers of Lvov. It is a story of transformation of a human being in the face of extreme adversity and the fight for survival. Holland has described her approach to the film as straightforward and realistic - 'without exagerrated colours, using a monochromatic pallette with the camera following the characters along endless sewer canals, with countless dialogues, the darkness must remain dark, and viewers must feel as if they are there with the heroes', she declared.
Even before its release the film received laudatory critical reviews. Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern reported from the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado:
Any mention of movies and sewers brings to mind 'The Third Man', but Ms. Holland's brave epic could not be farther from conventional entertainment; the suspense here, derived from a true story, is excruciating and inspiring in equal measure. The hero, Soha (a perfect performance by Robert Wieckiewicz) brings Oskar Schindler to mind because he's a Gentile who decides to save Jewish lives. Otherwise, Soha's story is singular and superbly dramatic, the evolution of an obtuse anti-Semite into a guardian angel.
In a review on filmjournal.com, Wendy R. Weinstein writes that
Holland, with her gifted production team, miraculously finds the right tone, keeping us down in the sewers with all their stink, claustrophobia and vermin, suggesting what it might be like to live without light or fresh air for 14 months in constant fear of discovery and annihilation. It is not easy to watch, but it is impossible to turn away.