If the Polish delegates to the Kolkata International Film Festival did not need a guide to make their way around the city, it was because they had a Calcutta regular in their ranks. “This is my 10th trip,” Michal Kwiecinski explained, with a smile, on noting the look of surprise on the listener’s face on hearing that he had taken his compatriots to the Mullick Ghat flower market that morning.

“I feel very comfortable here. It feels safe. Even at night I can go out without any negative emotion. My favourite places are the flower market, the Howrah bridge and the British cemetery,” he rattled off, over coffee at the Taj Bengal poolside.

The director of the film Chopin Chopin (or Chopin: A Sonata in Paris, as it is titled in English), which was a screening highlight of the festival, said his Calcutta trips were always connected to the film festival. “My first visit was four years before Mamata Banerjee arrived (in power) — in 2007. It was a rich festival in those days. There used to be parties every night, sponsored by businesses. That’s how I know all the big hotels of Calcutta. In those days, Flurys was the only luxury place (outside the hotels). There was no Starbucks or anything else.”

His earlier film Filip, a Polish war drama, was a part of KIFF 2023. Chopin Chopin focuses on the composer’s life in Paris in the 1830s.

Asked what made him choose the subject, Kwiecinski said he was looking for a new subject after Filip. Eryk Kulm, who played the lead in Filip, told him that his dream was to play the composer, regarded as a national hero and a powerful symbol of Polish identity and patriotism. That set him off on the research trail.

Kwiecinski loved Ferdinand Hoesick’s biography. “It was a scientific analysis of Chopin, without any interpretation, sticking only to facts, quoting only the texts of letters to (Honore de) Balzac, George Sand or what other people wrote about Chopin. It read like a day-by-day account of his life,” he said, clarifying that he wanted to avoid the subjective spin that most biographers add.

The letters gave him a new perspective. “I noticed the personality of Chopin to be absolutely different from what we are taught in school, projecting him as very weak — all the time coughing, very romantic, pale and generally without energy.”

Rather, the composer came across as full of energy. “He liked to joke. He moved very quickly, contrary to perception. That was very important for his personality, especially when you show him on screen. My film sticks to facts. I feel that I am the biggest specialist of Chopin in Poland now — about his psychology, not music.”

Kwiecinski contests another popular notion that specific pieces were composed because he thought about Poland all the time. “I’m sure that’s not true. He might have thought about music from Poland (as is evident in the influence of polonaises and mazurkas in his compositions) but not pictures of Poland, its trees or dogs. People try to relate images of Poland to his pieces because in his music, they feel them. And now I am in a kind of battle with the society of Chopinists.”

Kwiecinski feels that Chopin was “very cosmopolitan in nature”. “Because we do not have many geniuses, Polish people want to believe that though he was in France, he dreamt about Poland day and night,” he said candidly.

t2oS reminded him of a line in the film where Chopin says that he wants his heart to be taken back to Poland after his death. “It’s true. But it’s one phrase, not what he thought all the time.”

Roots in Polish soil

Chopin was half-French as his father was French, and half-Polish, as his mother was Polish. He was born in Poland in 1810. At the age of 20, he left Poland, intending to study music abroad. He had planned to return but the November Uprising against Russian rule began shortly after he left, and he remained in France for the rest of his life. “The tsar of Russia refused his return.”

Chopin’s family was in Poland and he wrote every week to his parents and sister. There is a family reunion shown in the film after he is diagnosed with tuberculosis. The location, Kwiecinski pointed out, was in Karlsbad, which at the time was in the Kingdom of Bohemia, a part of the Austrian Empire. “He never returned to Poland, because he was on the tsar’s black list. In this, he was very Polish, because he was against the tsar’s oppression. Poland was under Russia, and they treated Poland as part of Russia. The tsar had proposed that he be the Russian national composer (with the title of the First Pianist of His Imperial Majesty Tsar of Russia). But he rejected the offer (in protest against the invasion of Poland). So he was exiled.”

Paris was then the centre of music. “The best composers and pianists — Franz Liszt, Sigismond Thalberg, Carl Czerny, etc. — lived in Paris. Chopin settled in very quickly in French conditions. And they appreciated him though he didn’t like to play in big halls because he didn’t like the audience. Even in the film, I observed the same.”

The film shows an exchange with Liszt before a concert where both would play, in which he speaks of his dislike of performing before large audiences. “He demanded that the public concentrate when he played.”

Kwiecinski referred to a debate in Poland about Chopin’s patriotism. “After the (failure of the November) revolution in Poland, a lot of Polish refugees came to Paris, but he didn’t like them. They were poor, not well-dressed. They wanted only money. He did give enormous amounts to a refugee organisation in Paris. Despite not liking concerts, he played in one (in November 1848 in London, his last) for the aid of refugees. He was ready to help them but did not want to associate with them. He belonged to a higher level of society. But he was absolutely a patriot.”

Modern touch

Before his death, he began to experiment. “The music he composed in this phase was not something simple for the audience, but very difficult and strange. It is very contemporary even today.”

The film has a scene where a dying Chopin asks his friends to burn all his unpublished compositions. “They exist because friends, like Julian Fontana, didn’t fully follow his order. Only 20 per cent were burnt. (Even last year, some new compositions were unearthed, the film’s creative producer Magdalena Pietrowska interjects). But he wrote only 28 hours of music.”

Eryk Kulm, who put in an intense performance in the title role, had finished music school in the past. “So he knew how to play the piano. But Chopin is hard to play for someone who is not regular. That’s why Eryk went to a chalet in the French Alps and practised for six hours every day for several months to learn how to play the parts of Chopin’s music that were filmed,” the director recalled.

The film had its musical challenges. We refer to a scene where Chopin is trying to compose a piece but not getting it right. He throws away the sheets of the score in frustration and then sits down again and finally, finishes the composition.

“The final piece is Chopin but what he plays before was composed by a modern composer, Tomasz Ritter, using some structures of the final piece,” the director said. “We needed a proper musician who understands how someone who is composing a piece will reach that final point,” the producer added.

Ritter also composed an improvisation that Chopin is shown to play in a house party scene, dedicated to a fly in the room.

Period piano

The film stayed so true to the period that all the instruments used belonged to that era. “We used period pianos in which the clavier (keyboard) is 20 per cent shorter than today’s Steinway models. Even very good pianists don’t want to play it because it’s another dimension. But Ritter is a master in playing historic instruments and has won an international competition,” Kwiecinski said.

At the start of the film, Chopin is shown to play an Erard piano, and 10 minutes later, the make changes to Playel. “Chopin had a contract with the Pleyel company to provide him with pianos. That’s why we had to get an actual Pleyel. In Poland, we have two, but in France, there are hundreds as the company is French. We got ours from Poland. We had it for only one scene — the concert for six towards the beginning,” Pietrowska said.

The piece, called Hexameron, was written on six pianos. Princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso had conceived the piece in 1837 and persuaded Liszt to assemble a set of variations of the march along with five of his pianist friends.

New release

Chopin Chopin released on October 10 in Poland, alongside the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, which is held every five years and concluded this year on October 23. “It’s running in the theatres. After this, it will stream on Canal Plus for a year and later on Netflix. It will also air on TVP, our Polish national television,” the director stated.

Kwiecinski plans to do a film in Calcutta. “The script is ready. Only I have changed the age of the hero from 65 to 40 years. The story is about a rich European man without a family. He comes here and spiritually discovers himself but things get complicated.”

Which means Kwiecinski already has a reason to visit the city for the 11th time.