Friday, March 16, 2018

Direct Cinema

Nawet nie wiesz, jak bardzo cie kocham/You Have No Idea How Much I Love You (2016) - Lozinski
Screen Shot 2018-03-16 at 6.34.49 AM
I've seen some excellent documentaries coming out of Poland recently. You Have No Idea How Much I Love You is one of them. The set up is simple: it's a recording of family therapy sessions - mother (Ewa Szymczyk), daughter (Hanna Maciag) and the therapist (Bogdan de Barbaro). With close ups of these three people, sometimes the camera panning, sometimes over the shoulder, are as direct cinema as you can get. It's not their bad complexions we notice, but their eyes, catching the lights as they speak that lend the film's hypnotic power. Lozinski focuses on these three and nothing else and we are held captive audience, holding on to every word spoken.

Even though they grew apart, these two women got together in the hopes of solving their differences - abandonment issue, loneliness both stemming from Ewa's divorce when Hanna was still young. Blames, waterworks, breakthrough. It's truly captivating stuff.