on Essential Killing

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 28 December 2010 20:59

Written by Jack Angstreich

On December 20th, 2010, legendary director, Jerzy Skolimowski, presented his newest feature, Essential Killing -- which stars Vincent Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner -- at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater.

Speaking before the screening, Skolimowski recalled once introducing another of his works by saying, "Ladies and gentleman, you are going to see my worst film I ever made", but added that here he had the pleasure of announcing that Essential Killing was the best he had ever made. Unfortunately, the film was screened in a 35-millimeter print transferred from either a digital-intermediate or a video original and, as a consequence, the image-quality was unsatisfactory.

After the screening, in an engaging Q & A session, Skolimowski agreed that Essential Killing was an angry film but joked that he was mostly angry with the bitter cold weather he encountered when shooting it.

The filmmaker said that although he was friendly with Gallo, having acted alongside him before (in a film by Mika Kaurismäki), he never thought he would direct him given the actor's reputation for difficulty, explaining that he had worked with Klaus Maria Brandauer -- in The Lightship -- which he described as an "unpleasant" experience.

However, after a festival screening of Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro, Skolimowski observed a certain animality in Gallo's movement and, to his own surprise, found himself tapping the actor on the shoulder to offer him the screenplay to Essential Killing which he read and agreed to do the very same day.

In answer to a question from the audience, Skolimowski said that he doesn't storyboard because he has a good memory for his visual ideas. He also denied that he was glorifying the actions of a Taliban soldier or that his protagonist is a Taliban soldier, stressing that a lot of time was spent in conceiving how to communicate that the character is a civilian.

The director said that the film's inspiration lay in his laziness. His previous feature, Four Nights with Anna, was filmed in his house and he sought to write another screenplay that  could be shot close to his home.

In response to a member of the audience who insisted that the bloodied white horse at the end of the film was a clear reference to Polish iconography, Skolimowski said, "I'm not really interested in politics" and "I'm not really talking about Poland and politics". He added, "I treat this film as a poem".

Expanding upon his introductory statement that Essential Killing is his best work to date, the filmmaker said that his three worst films were Adventures of Gerard with Claudia Cardinale, Torrents of Spring with Nastassja Kinski, and his adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz's classic novel, Ferdydurke, which he joked was probably the worst of all since, unlike the other two, it didn't even have the virtue of starring any beautiful ladies.

Skolimowski returned to introduce his extraordinary Deep End as "the second best film I've ever made"; it was presented in an outstanding 35-millimeter archival studio print from Paramount.

Screening of Essential Killing
December 20, 2010
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY  10023
212-875-5600

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