Interrogation (1982): merciless, Kafkaesque, a two-hour pressure cooker (Blu-Ray Review)

There aren’t many home media releases where a highlight of the additional features is the transcript of a government meeting. But then, there aren’t many films with a history like Ryszard Bugajski’s Interrogation, released on Blu-Ray by Second Run. Second Run have previously released this film on DVD, but that was far from the first time it was available for home viewing. Michael Szporer’s booklet estimates that it was seen by around two million people on VHS, which would be a sizeable hit were it not for the fact that the VHS in question was an unauthorised bootleg. Filmed in the brief moment of optimism around Lech Wałęsa’s Solidarity movement, Interrogation was released into a very different Poland, one whose leaders were desperate to prevent any future challenges to their regime. Bugajski’s film, a merciless portrait of one woman’s detention in a Stalin-era prison, was exactly the sort of film they didn’t want to release.

And that’s where the government meeting comes in, as Szporer shares booklet space with an astonishing full transcript of the meeting where it was decided the film would be banned. The most interesting thing is that all of the attendees – even the ones who find the film most offensive – agree that it is a superbly made film. On this count, they’re not wrong. Interrogation is a two-hour pressure cooker, one that is, necessarily, unvaried in mood but somehow never becomes boring. It doesn’t have the surreal flourishes of Wojciech Marczewski’s similar film Shivers, released around the same time, but there is something in it that is a hair above realism: perhaps it’s the way Bugajski places his camera close to the actors, low down, and encourages them to lean forward as if they’re about to burst out of the screen. Perhaps, too, it’s the near-hallucinatory intensity of Krystyna Janda’s lead performance, which can stand alongside the work of Isabelle Adjani in Possession or Aleksei Kravchenko in Come and See in terms of exorcism-like ferocity.

Janda plays Tonia, a hard-drinking, life-loving singer who is one day bundled into the back of the secret police’s van and taken to prison for reasons that are initially a Kafkaesque mystery. The opening clip of Tonia’s act evokes Weimar Germany more than it does Stalin’s USSR, and sure enough, Tonia isn’t particularly tuned in to the world around her. She appears in agit-prop stage productions, yes, but only because there isn’t much else on offer if you want to sing and act in mid-20th century Poland. The initial mystery, then, is how could someone this indifferent to politics become an enemy of the state?

One of Bugajski’s most effective wrong-footing moves is that he clears up this puzzle fairly quickly. Tonia had a one-night stand with a colonel who has fallen from favour for reasons that are deliberately never quite clear. The interrogation of the title, then, is not just an inquiry into Tonia’s beliefs but into her sexuality, and it is horribly obvious how much the men in charge are enjoying the chance to strip their prisoner naked and ask her invasive questions. Interrogation wisely avoids the conclusion of films like The White Ribbon or Sweet Movie, which address totalitarianism from such a psychosexual viewpoint you could be forgiven for wondering if politics played any part in these dictatorships. But it is very clear that the ideological rigidity of Stalinism has given some extremely unsavoury men license to loose their worst selves.

Films set in totalitarian states often invite the viewer to ask what they would do in a situation like this: would you be a rebellious Miloš, from Closely Observed Trains, or a quisling Kopfrkingl, from The Cremator? One of Interrogation‘s great strengths is that it’s very easy to put yourself in Tonia’s shoes. Indeed, Bugajski may have shaped his drama with the intention of silencing those bores who use films as a springboard to tell you what they’d have done in this situation. Tonia never backs down, always plans ahead, and meets every challenge with plenty of spirit and defiance. Even when she attempts suicide at her lowest point, it is perhaps the most harrowingly angry, violent suicide attempt in cinema history (and I’ve seen Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters). None of this gets her anywhere. She runs with all her might at the brick wall of Communist Poland, and the only result is that it hits her harder each time.

But this question is about more than just identification with the heroes. The two primary villains of Interrogation, Zawada and Morawski, are also disturbingly recognisable. Zawada, played by Janusz Gajos, is perhaps the more familiar type, a man who operates in this brutal system by refusing to question the morality of it for one second. Like Jack Lint in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, he’s an everyday family man whose job is to torture; only when his salacious side slips out do you suspect he’s not in charge of his emotions. As Morawski, Adam Ferency has the interesting challenge of displaying a level of concern for Tonia without allowing the character to atone for his actions. It is true that Morawski displays a greater compassion, a greater need to persuade rather than simply brutalise, but Bugajski doesn’t mistake this for a redemptive trait. Rather, the fact that Morawski thinks of himself as a decent, feeling man makes his actions even more repellent, and Bugajski’s final judgment on him is thrillingly cold and unforgiving.

As well as the aforementioned 40-page booklet, the disc also features an archival interview with Bugajski, who died in 2019. By 2008, the controversy over Interrogation had receded enough for Bugajski to receive the Medal for Merit to Culture from the Polish government. Today, things are different. One of Interrogation‘s main dramatic ironies is that both Tonia and her colonel lover fought in the Polish resistance during Nazi occupation; a Communist government should be able to appreciate that, but their militia was deemed too Western in character, so here they are. Similarly, you would think that Poland’s right-wing populist government would be in favour of anyone who participated in a ringing condemnation of Communism like Interrogation. Yet Agnieszka Holland, who has a supporting role here, just provoked an astonishing tantrum from the Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro when her film Green Border won the Special Jury Prize at Venice. Holland’s crime, like Interrogation‘s, is that she is not merely anti-Communist but is anti-totalitarian and pro-liberty. Like the people whose speeches are recorded in the disc’s booklet, it’s interesting how many politicians find that threatening.

Graham’s Archive: Interrogation (1982)