Structure of Crystal

"In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions or molecules in a crystalline material." (Wikipedia)


Poland, 1969. It is the tenth year of Władysław Gomułka's term as Communist Party chief. Poland, like other countries on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, has attracted international attention for its films, most of them reexamining the tragic/heroic past (Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds). In the Sixties, a new trend in Polish cinema of films set in the present (Knife in the Water, Night Train) emerged, and by 1969, when Krzsysztof Zanussi made his feature film debut, there had been demonstrations by university students in Warsaw. 

Structure of Crystal (Struktura kryształu), written and directed by Zanussi, student of physics and philosophy, is quiet, contemplative, and sagaciously cool. On a cold afternoon, Janek and his wife Anna are waiting by the road, which can't be distinguished from the rest of the snow-covered landscape. It's getting late and Anna wonders if there was some miscommunication. A large sledge loaded with hay passes them. Two young children, students of Anna's (she is their teacher) pass by on their way home from school. Past 3 o'clock, they hear an engine and see Marek's car, a VW beetle, rapidly approaching. Marek sees them, stops and reverses, jumps out of the car and embraces Janek.

They are friends and former colleagues. Marek is a highly-accredited university professor, author of studies on crystal structure, recently returned from visits to Harvard University. Janek gave up his career to live with Anna in a state-owned dacha, spends his days providing the local airport with meterological observations while Anna teaches grade school. Though they are old friends and Janek is happy to see Marek after so many years, he knows why he has come.

Janek and Anna's lives, as Marek slowly learns, are contented, even fulfilled. And it puzzles him how a man he once knew, who was at the head of his scientific field, could be satisfied with such a quiet life. In one scene, we see them sitting together, Janek, Marek and Anna, and Marek says, "Like in a Chekhov play. We're only missing a samovar. Silence and nothing happens." But Anna insists, "Actually, there is a lot happening in Chekhov's plays." Janek asks Marek if he knows how Chekhov died, and explains:

"He suffered from TB. In his day it was a fatal disease. Doctors sent him away to Crimea. He had many friends there. He was visited by actors of the Moscow Art Theatre. When he felt he was going to die, he invited guests. They stayed up till late and Chekhov entertained them with funny anecdotes. He was on his sofa. He didn't feel well. He asked for a glass of champagne, took a sip and spoke in a very low voice: 'Ich sterbe' ... And he turned towards the wall ..." 

But Anna stops him before he can finish his slightly garbled version of the story.(1)

Marek learns that Janek was in a mountain climbing accident and had been bedridden for six months. He gave up mountain climbing, but not because of the accident, he tells Marek, but because he no longer has the time to devote to it.

The two most important exchanges between the two men revolve around Janek's abandoning his research and going into, essentially, internal exile.

MAREK: Listen, I see that one can take a holiday for a few months, a year. To catch your breath. But you've been here for...
JANEK: Almost five years. Has it ever occurred to you that "catching your breath" may be the right way to live?
MAREK: Come on, man, one has to do something. These are the best years of our lives. You'll have time to meditate when you retire.
JANEK: Are you sure?
MAREK: Of what?
JANEK: That you'll live long enough to retire?
MAREK: Stop fooling around.
JANEK: I meant it.

And later:

MAREK: Excuse me. I don't want to be indiscreet but I don't get it, what a man like you is doing here. What do you fill your days with?

A short montage follows showing us how Janek fills his days - with fetching water from the well, baking bread, making home-brewed beer, tending his honey bees.

MAREK: How old are you?
JANEK: I'll be 36 in March. No, 37. Right, I was born in 1931, so it's 37.
MAREK: Dear God, man. You're almost forty. Three-quarters of your life have already passed and you busy yourself with bullshit. How can you waste your potential this way?
JANEK: Waste what?
MAREK: Gifts, talent, yourself.
JANEK: How do you know I waste my life?
MAREK: It is so banal but life, you have to make some decisions. One must ... find some goal in life. And I am looking at you and, by God, I don't get it. Where are you going?
JANEK: Maybe I'm just trying to answer this question. I guess it'll take me the remaining quarter of my life or more. We're quite long-lived in our family.

Zanussi dramatizes the choices presented to the intellectual in times of conflict: to remain engaged, no matter how disappointing the results, or to disengage from society and withdraw, if not exactly to an ivory tower, to a cabin in the woods and take no part in the events of his age.

It is easy to see the attractions of Marek's life: financial reward, prestige, accolades from his peers. But Janek's life is alluring enough for Marek to notice: his intimacy with Anna, a life among the elements and all the time in the world on his hands in which to discover where he is going. Marek finds himself attracted to Anna enough to flirt with her. Anna, in her turn, is attracted to Marek's celebrity. But she is a country girl, after all, who knows her own limitations. After an excursion to a nearby town (in which we sight "the artist Lomnicki" getting in a car with two attractive girls - it's actually the actor Daniel Olbrychski), and taking in a Swedish nudie flick at the local cinema, Marek asks her on the drive home how she liked the movie. (Zanussi even includes a brief clip replete with Swedish nudity.) "I hate it when they show such filth," Anna replies. "After all, I'm a teacher." 

Marek interrupts Janek and Anna's quiet life sufficiently for them to reaffirm their commitment to it. Janek figures out that Marek was sent on a mission to convince him to return to Warsaw and his life at the university. Marek's mission a complete failure, he answers the call to return to Warsaw. In the last shots, Marek, behind the wheel of his VW, drops the sun visor to shade his eyes from the sun's glare, just as Janek is gazing through his telescope directly into the sun. 

Zanussi's sympathies seem to me somewhat split 49 years after the film's release. Evidently he sided with the more engaged, if cynical, Marek, who returns from years in the US with images of promise and prosperity. Janek has turned his back on his responsibilities as an intellectual in the challenging times facing Poland under Moscow's thumb. By now, however, I think Janek is the more sympathetic of the two.

For a first film, Structure of Crystal is remarkably accomplished and assured. Zanussi's handling of his actors (Barbara Wrzesińska, Jan Mysłowicz, and Andrzej Żarnecki) is subtle. Wojciech Kilar, who subsequently worked closely with Zanussi for decades to come, supplies the film with a spare and often lovely musical accompaniment. And Stefan Matyjaszkiewicz creates black and white images (2) so striking that he makes the winter setting as alluring as Janek's placid life. Still, as Marek insists to Janek, "Without a risk, without a fight, you'll never learn the truth." Marek's choice is the right one.


(1) Chekhov actually died in Badenweiler. His wife Olga is the originator of the story of his deathbed scene. Although he spoke almost no German, "Ich sterbe" ("I am dying") were his last words.
(2) Looking through a glossy American magazine, Janek asks Marek if he has seen color tv. "I prefer black and white," he answers.