Gadajace glowy krzysztof kieslowski biography

Gadajace Glowy (Talking Heads) by Krzysztof Kieslowski

It is Krzysztof Kieslowski runs a sort of sociological poll. Seventy-nine Poles, aged seven to , answer three questions: When were you born? What are you? What would you like most? They want similar values: freedom, justice, democracy. We watch people thinking honestly, “latching on to something Good”, as one of the persons in the film says. From those registered on tape, Kieslowski chooses 44 people and puts them in chronological order: from a one-year-old who can’t speak yet, to a year-old woman who can’t hear the question, but repeats several times that she’d like to live longer. He shows a whole gallery of talking heads – kids, pupils from primary and secondary schools, students, a full-time activist with a youth organization, an engineer on the threshold of his professional career, an electrician, a nurse, a priest, a history teacher, a mother of two, a writer, a sociologist, a sculptor, a taxi driver, retired people, a woman who thinks that above all she is Catholic, and a chemical engineer who acknowledges questions with: “these days I drink, everything’s fine.” On the level of image nothing in particular is happening. Simple heads come one after another, under which there is information about the date of birth. Yet this gallery fascinates, for two reasons: the viewer observes how people’s dreams change with age. At the beginning a funny two-year-old boy wants to be car – a Syrenka, and at the end, an almost one-hundred-year-old woman, having recently lost her husband, doesn’t want anything more. But this is only seemingly a mere enumeration of personal wishes. People’s dreams compose an image of their reality, as they indirectly speak of what it lacks, of what irritates them, of what they don’t agree with. They say: I would like the lack of respect to disappear; I’d like people to do something for

Gadajace Glowy (Talking Heads) is a serious documentary film which features people from different age groups, backgrounds and professions. Kieslowski starts his film by asking three simple questions to a boy aged 1 year.

These questions are:

a) Who are you?
b) When were you born?
c) What is important for you?

A common element of all answers involves respect for an individual.

These three questions are asked to many young children, boys, girls, men and women. We get to hear very calculated replies which evoke all kinds of human feelings. It is through these replies that we come to know that Polish people are exhorted to be brave, honest and decent in their daily lives. Master cameraman Jacek Petrycki carefully films these replies which have been formulated in order to state that individual freedom is not enough as people must live in a democratic setup. At the end of the film, one of the most poignant reply comes from a lady who is years old. She states that she would like to live more.

Talking Heads is a documentary film of highest quality about heads which talk. It is not an ordinary, trite talk which one gets to hear. Kieslowski has conceived &#;Talking Heads&#; in such a manner that we get to hear frank views about life from simple, ordinary human beings.

Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski / Poland /