A Short Film About Love (1988)

(Contains spoilers.)

Why do people cry?

You don’t know? Have you never wept?

Once I wept, long ago.

When everyone left you and went away, then?……….People cry for many reasons. When someone dies, when someone leaves them………..when they can no longer bear something……….

What can they not bear?

Living. When someone hurts them.

So? Is there nothing to be done?

Once Marcin had terrible toothache. He heated an iron and pressed it against his left shoulder. In the pain of his shoulder, he forgot all about his tooth.

The person you love is suffering, weeping bitterly. Why, you don’t know. There’s no way to know. You can do nothing to stop Magda’s tears. Magda doesn’t know of Tomek’s love—this love is one-sided, and he seeks no return for his devotion, so running to her side isn’t possible either. Tomek must watch, helpless: Magda is crying. What will Tomek do now? He spreads his five fingers and places his left hand on the table. Eyes closed, he takes the sharp point of closed steel scissors and strikes repeatedly at the six spaces between his fingers on the table. What he wanted happens. The scissors’ sharp edge pierces Tomek’s index finger, blood flows. Over there, Magda gropes for the milk spilled from the fallen bottle on the table, swallowing her pain; here, in the intensity of his finger’s agony, Tomek tries to displace his earlier suffering. This torment, or the pain that comes from pressing ice against his wound—both are rewards of love for Tomek.

Tomek is twenty, somewhat different from other young men—tender-hearted, knowing how to love and suffer intensely, mentally immature, given to imagination and emotion, far too sensitive; his virginity still intact. Magda is at least twelve to fifteen years older than Tomek, sensual by nature, mentally mature, a believer in body-centered love, pragmatic, with little objection to being bedmate to multiple men. Curiously, Tomek knows these aspects of Magda. Knowing all this, he still loves her. Whether Magda loves him or not doesn’t much concern him. His philosophy is that love is a personal feeling—it needn’t be mutual. Let us turn away from their conversation for a moment.

Where did you get that?

It’s a souvenir. It’s yours now.

I’m not good. Don’t give this to me. You know I’m not good. Really, I’m not good.

I have no problem with that. I love you.

The protagonist Tomek in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ‘A Short Film About Love (1988)’ places his eye to a telescope on the transparent glass side of his room’s window and watches the heroine Magda, and we watch along with him. We watch for an hour or so; he has been watching for nearly a year, in secret. When Magda returns home, what she does at home, who comes to see her, why they come—watching all this from afar, Tomek falls in love with Magda. Sometimes he calls, says nothing. Magda knew none of this. The day she finds out is the day Tomek voluntarily reveals himself. To get a glimpse of Magda up close, Tomek takes a job delivering milk door to door alongside his post office work. He stands at Magda’s door, hands over the milk bottle when she opens it, and walks away. But he knows Magda doesn’t love him, sleeps with other men, feels nothing for him in her heart. (Actually, Magda feels nothing for anyone.) When he sees through his telescope that Magda is being intimate with another man, Tomek immediately turns his eye away from the telescope, refusing to watch what follows. When do we turn our eyes away from an event? For two reasons. One: If we turn away, we no longer see the event. What we didn’t see didn’t happen—it’s comforting to think this way. How do we learn of events? By seeing or hearing. If we do neither, where’s the harm in thinking the event never occurred? What I didn’t see, didn’t hear about, therefore don’t know—there’s a certain happiness in believing it’s not happening. A tree falls in the forest. No one sees, no one hears. If we live believing no tree fell anywhere, what harm could come? Two: We turn away because the event is unpleasant to watch. Simple arithmetic! Now the question is: what psychology drove Tomek to fall in love with a woman considerably older than himself, knowing everything he knew? Let’s see.

Why do you watch me secretly?

Because I love you. I really do.

So what do you want?

I don’t know.

Do you want to kiss me?

No.

Perhaps you want to sleep with me.

No.

Then what? Will you run away with me? To some lakeside? Or to Budapest?

No.

Then what do you want?

Nothing.

Nothing at all?

Yes.

Magda can’t understand this wanting-nothing of Tomek’s. A boy loves a girl, yet wants nothing from her. This love brings neither immediate nor deferred pleasure. What does it mean, then? Magda has never encountered anyone so strange! Where is this boy’s problem? Magda becomes curious. She too begins watching Tomek through binoculars. Whatever women may say, nearly every woman is curious about a boy who can’t be classified by any grammar. Tomek takes Magda out for ice cream. From there, Magda cleverly brings Tomek home. When Magda tries to become intimate, Tomek flees. Returning home, he slashes his wrist with a razor blade, draws blood, ends up hospitalized. Why did Tomek do this? Unable to cope with the shock of his first direct lesson in sexuality, becoming mentally distraught? Or seeing that the person he loves is eager to reduce his love to trivial physical desire? The one Tomek wants to bind in love wants to drag Tomek into lust? Perhaps poor Tomek couldn’t accept such degradation and humiliation of love. After that incident, love—real love—awakens in Magda’s heart for Tomek. What kind? The seventh of the Bible’s Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not commit adultery…….After Tomek is hospitalized, Magda’s lover comes to her apartment. Without opening the door, Magda tells him to leave. She changes her clothing and behavior, wanting to return from her old life. She wants to surrender her emotions and feelings entirely to Tomek. And wanting this, she will no longer tread in other men’s shadows.

In this film, what goes unsaid is what we seem to hear. What remains unexpressed is what we seem to feel. Throughout the film, the selection and use of background instrumentals keeps us entranced; alongside the events, we too move forward under music’s spell. A question circles in our minds: What is Tomek’s condition, really? Obsession? Or love? Kieślowski’s answer: it’s called love. This love is of such purity and intensity that the Magdas of this mundane world could never imagine it. Feeling such love is like having the entire sky crash down on your head; before such vastness, one’s whole existence seems small and trivial. Tomek is mentally immature for his age. How far he can journey with what he feels for Magda, or whether Magda will decide to spend her life holding hands with such emotional intensity—the film offers no clear indication. And because it doesn’t, the film is beautiful. Just as the land of ‘having-everything’ is ugly, so too are ‘having-everything’ films meaningless.

One question: Is it realistic for a woman to keep her room’s window open, not turn off the lights, change clothes in that state, receive her partner, allowing Tomek to observe her private life through a telescope without difficulty? No, it isn’t. But to accept the film’s theme and for the sake of watching cinema, we must accept this. The more purely one loves, the more purely one suffers. This is how it has always been in the world. So it was with Tomek. Tomek’s love for Magda gave him pain, and Magda’s indifference toward Tomek gave us regret. Later, Magda’s love and attraction for Tomek reminds us that genuine selfless love for someone, however delayed, eventually births love in that person’s heart. Kieślowski makes us believe: the wound of eternal love is more supremely blissful than the excitement of fleeting passion.