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“Put each your psyche into it, play the mode you feel.” Nearly 175 years person passed since tuberculosis claimed Frederic Chopin astatine 39. Yet, his celebrated words proceed to echo, and his melancholic euphony endures.
Across the world, wherever a kid is introduced to Western melody, the writer of the soft holds his manus done the alleys of etudes, preludes, ballads, and mazurkas to scope the last goal: simplicity.
The lad of Poland, whose bosom rests successful a religion successful Warsaw, has been a taxable of galore cinematic and literate portrayals. This week, the seventh variation of Habitat International Film Festival comes to a adjacent with the pulsating biopic of the virtuoso. Helmed by noted Polish filmmaker Michal Kwiecinski, Chopin, A Sonata successful Paris (Polish title: Chopin Chopin!) captures the genius of the maestro successful the Romantic Period without submitting to his stature. It seeks to find the scarred psyche of the instrumentalist whose compositions proceed to heal the world. The film, according to Kwiecinski, tries to demystify the pale, ethereal, suffering-poet cliché and contiguous a much energetic, socially magnetic, sexually charismatic, fame-savvy Chopin.
Filmmaker Michal Kwiecinski | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Starring the young, aggravated Eryk Kulm successful the pb role, the movie showcases Chopin’s rumbustious relation with strong, autarkic women with tuberculosis playing the villain of the piece. Along the way, we larn however the unwellness and tendency came unneurotic to specify his music. Discussing the film’s affectional and ocular design, the filmmaker asserts that earlier depictions of Chopin presented him and his euphony arsenic ‘slow’ portion his probe suggests otherwise. He wanted to contiguous Chopin arsenic “a rockstar of his times” whom nine loved. “He was progressive and spontaneous, a king of society,” Kwiecinski says.
He compares the Parisian society’s conflict with cholera and tuberculosis, arsenic we took clip to fig retired COVID-19. “People didn’t cognize however to woody with the unwellness and fell to superstitions and shamans to find a cure.” The illness, helium holds, affected the musician’s romanticist pursuits and created a analyzable enslaved betwixt the thought and look of emotion that takes a mercurial signifier connected screen.
Chopin, Kwiencinski feels, “transported the emotion of emotion into euphony alternatively than to the person.” The melancholy finds look done his ocular plan arsenic well. Sunlight, a potion for a wilting Chopin, becomes a metaphor for anticipation that shines done his model erstwhile it is excessively late.
Discussing Chopin’s unfastened narration with French novelist George Sand, Kwiecinski notes that she sought closeness to the genius but didn’t privation to hindrance him successful a defined relationship. “In her letters to Chopin’s friend, she writes she didn’t caput him with different women arsenic agelong arsenic helium continued to supply her intelligence stimulation.”
Kwiecinski, who has been to India galore times, is anxious to showcase the biopic successful the film-and-music-crazy country. He says helium has a publication astir a Polish businessman and an Indian idiosyncratic acceptable successful Kolkata, and he’s anxious to marque it happen.
Chopin, A Sonata successful Paris volition beryllium screened connected March 22 astatine the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, 6pm. To registry log connected to indiahabitat.org/hiff2026.
