To Kill a Priest – Agnieszka Holland | #film

To Kill a Priest – Agnieszka Holland

French-American 1988 psychological thriller directed by Agnieszka Holland. The first film based on the story of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko.

Agnieszka Holland learned about the murder of Jerzy Popiełuszko, the chaplain of Warsaw’s Solidarity movement, which had attracted crowds of people dissatisfied with the system in the early 1980s, whilst abroad. The director, who decided to stay in the West after martial law was imposed, got to know the legendary priest personally and was deeply shaken both by his death and by the trial, during which three SB (Służba Bezpieczeństwa – Security Service) officers responsible for beating the priest were convicted.

It was not only personal reasons, however, that led to Holland’s decision to make a film based on these tragic events, but also the desire to bring the Polish experience closer to foreign viewers. To Kill a Priest, which for obvious reasons could not be made in Poland in 1988, was filmed in France with French-American funds. The director managed to attract a great cast for her English-language film – apart from Christopher Lambert, who was at the peak of his fame at the time, the drama featured actors who would become very popular only a few years later, such as Ed Harris, Tim Roth and Timothy Spall.

Years later, Holland reminisced that To Kill a Priest was her only work made for purely political-patriotic reasons. The director, however, brilliantly coped with the artistically difficult situation, because she did not make a banal film about Poland for Western viewers but opted for existential drama and created a universal parable.

Fortunately, Holland did not go in the direction of hagiography and martyrology. The film's priest Alek (Lambert) attracts crowds of people with his warmth and cordiality, but this character in no way resembles the hieratic figures of the saints. It is no coincidence that we see the priest for the first time during boxing training when the clergyman wants to see how it feels to 'get it right between the eyes'. Interestingly, it is not Alek who is the main protagonist of the film but his future executioner, the Security Service officer Stefan (Harris), who surveils the opposition-friendly priest. When persecution and provocation do not bring the desired results, the man becomes increasingly furious.

Holland tries to penetrate the psyche of Stefan, the son of a Stalinist, who has had to face the hatred of society since his childhood. As a functionary of the security apparatus, he is despised by opponents of the regime, which also affects his teenage son, rejected by his classmates. The feeling of being hated increases his frustration and aggression – when he cannot arouse sympathy, Stefan tries to arouse fear. The Polish authorities, Holland seems to be saying, are aware that they do not 'rule the hearts' of their people, which intensifies their hatred of society. The director shows a fractured Poland, divided into two camps that cannot communicate with each other. Starting with the first shot, the separation is often emphasised on a visual level through shots from behind a windowpane, which is a symbolic border between two worlds.

To Kill a Priest (trailer)

As Holland herself pointed out, To Kill a Priest is above all a story about being tempted by good. The key moment in the film seems to be when Stefan sees himself on a video recording of a mass – the man looks as if he is fervently praying during Father Alek's sermon. Obviously, the SB man's behaviour was dictated by a desire to blend in with the crowd, but one gets the impression that Stefan sees something else in this image of himself. Something that deeply disturbs him, because it is a contradiction of the path the man has taken in his life. The figure of Alek may embody the figure of a good double, someone who Stefan would perhaps secretly like to be, but is afraid of or is unable to. The protagonist's interest in the priest is deeply personal, almost obsessive. In depicting the relationship between Stefan and Alek, Holland refers to a biblical motif – it is no coincidence that the main musical theme (written and performed by the well-known singer Joan Baez) is entitled The Many Crimes of Cain.

For viewers hoping that To Kill a Priest will be a realistic story about one of the most depressing moments in the declining communist Poland, Holland's picture may be a disappointment. The director indeed tries to recreate Polish reality in French locations, but the very fact that in the story about Popiełuszko we see Western actors speaking in English (also singing protest songs in English) may evoke a kind of dissonance and a foreign effect in the Polish viewer. To Kill a Priest, however, becomes better when the film is read as a story about an archetypal internal conflict. Holland combines complex psychology with the convention of a thriller and precisely constructs the form of the work, in which one can find hidden tropes and visual symbols, referring amongst others to the motif of the double. This second layer was missing in another film devoted to the famous priest, Popiełuszko (2009) by Rafał Wieczyński, in which psychological nuance was replaced by a simple contrast between the steadfast priest and the primitive functionaries.

To Kill a Priest. Directed by Agnieszka Holland. Screenplay by Agnieszka Holland, Jean-Yves Pitoun. Director of photography: Adam Holender. Production design: Emile Ghigo. Music by Georges Delerue. Cast: Ed Harris (Stefan), Christopher Lambert (Father Alek), Joss Ackland (Colonel), Tim Roth (Felix), Timothy Spall (Igor), Pete Postlethwaite (Józef), Cherie Lunghi (Halina), Joanne Whalley (Anna, Józef’s wife), Wojciech Pszoniak (man at the top), and others., Columbia Pictures, France 3 Cinéma, J.P. Productions, Sofica Valor. France USA 1988. 115

Originally written in Polish, translated into English by P. Grabowski, December 2021

agnieszka holland

to kill a priest

solidarity

films about communism