Rozszczepione spojrzenia, inskryptcje, scenotafia: o Kieślowskiego filmowaniu żałoby
Devisions, Inscryptions and Scenotaphs: Kieślowski Filming Mourning

Summary/Abstract: The essay puts forth a „cryptic" interpretation of Krzysztof Kieślowski's film "The Double Life of Veronique". Viewed from the perspective of a conception of mourning (and melancholia) that draws on Freud, Lacan, and Derrida, Kieślowski's filming is a gesture of mourning. If film can be regarded as a species of prosthesis as well as of tomb or crypt, it creates milieus for mourning and commemoration. The gaze of Kieślowski's camera is cryptic inasmuch as it shoots reality from inside the tomb. Kieślowski's films (the essay discusses also relevant examples from the director's series "Decalogue") are thus acts of commemoration (means of sur-vival) which endow the departed with elusive ("ghostly" or „spectral") presence. The analysis is inspired by Freud's idea of culture as prosthesis, here applied to film that can be regarded as a tool which ensures the survival or afterlife of the absent dead, an idea which the essay's concluding remarks apply to Kieślowski's filming, thereby proposing to conceive it as self-commemoration.

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