Seweryn's color runs the gamut. And red, and black, and ultramarine. That's why he is where he is; in a place he has worked so hard for. And at a great moment in his life and career.
Before watching this movie, I assumed it would be like always. Laurel. It's just that we have already seen such films, such reports. And we know the next elements of the model document on the topic Andrzej Seweryn: that he is hard-working, with absolutely crazy over-work, that he is a success, also international, that the Comédie-Française, that the Polish Theater, that he is a conservative, but in the end he also likes to wear high heels and powder his nose in “The Queen”.
In a word: everything is known about him, but in fact nothing is known.
“I am a fictional character” it does not replicate a proven biographical pattern. Seweryn was not interested in this. Not any more. Another card for a guy who “achieved everything he wanted” would be a flower for his sheepskin coat. And Seweryn's sheepskin coat is exquisite, and the flower is trampled (from Firbank, not from Tuwim's “Polish Flowers”), and this should be noticed eventually.
The main achievement of Bartosiak's documentary – it does not focus on talking heads or side effects, but on the center, the hero, Seweryn. That does the trick.
And the hero is actually a fictional character. The artist is gone. He is impossible, vibrating, in several places at once, well dressed and disheveled, punctual and absent, he can be demanding, sometimes tiring, sometimes tired. And that's already a movie.
The question is therefore not rhetorical. An actor is a fictitious entity. It has to be, there is no other way. The absorption process: absorbing characters from literature, cinema, and life, and then quickly saying goodbye to them and inviting others.
Actor – Andrzej Seweryn is the truth that does not pretend to be fiction. Everything was processed, taken care of, put into appropriate words, sentences and conclusions. Andrzej Seweryn shares this knowledge generously.
Dozens of roles, characters, types. Still on the run. He answers the phone, calls back, takes notes. Life is rushing, he is rushing, but he controls everything, or tries to control it, and does not exceed a speed that would be dangerous.
Here's Andrzej Seweryn on the film set: focused, trying to concentrate, enthusiastically discovering an old still from “Nights and Days”, and naming the actors in the photo from memory. Most of them are no longer there.
Seweryn enthusiastic, Seweryn tired or irritated by human carelessness or laziness.
For many years he was considered a model of perfectionism, today he struggles with it a little, but not completely. You need to be organized in your head to set the right priorities. What is important, what is less important.
“I have never refused to test, ever, to anyone,” he says, irritated by the lack of professionalism of one of the teams. He is available. By taking on a role, he fully commits himself to the challenge. This is his ethics, which he developed years ago, first as an outstanding student of the Theater School, fascinated but critical of teachers, then as one of Wajda's favorite actors, and finally as an actor who conquered France and a piece of Europe, on the most difficult, because theater stage. market. And it was in French, which he learned from scratch, without an accent.
However, we will not hear about this in Bartosiak's documentary. There are no dates, no rankings, no old album with family photos. Perhaps others will do this, all this can also be found in the excellent interview “I drive”, which was conducted with Seweryn by Łukasz Klinke and Arkadiusz Bartosiak a few years ago.
“Fictional actor”, Andrzej Seweryn, functions in the document as – travesting the title of Bogusław Schaeffer's play – “an actor who exists but is impossible”. It is fiction, although it is not fiction.
He wants to work, he has to work, he can't do otherwise. If this were taken away from him, it would be catastrophic.
Phone calls, even on vacation, commitments, contracts. And still life, ordinary life. There are truly touching moments in this film, when the hero says that he is cold, or talks about the importance of the costume, claiming that the costume creates the role, and finally when he tramples the text before entering the stage, because he always does it, because he took it from his predecessors , and basically no one asks where this ritual came from.
Another picture: Seweryn with tears in his eyes remembering his friend, Jan Lityński; or the strict director recalling old times with Joanna Trzepiecińska, who was the only one who showed up for the rehearsal.
Exercises, repetition, spilled milk, Shakespeare and drag queens. The dialogue with the cleaning lady is powerful in this film. No screenwriter could come up with this. Seweryn is at home, at the Polish Theater, trying to open up to his employee. He weighs his words so as not to offend her, God forbid. He says he has respect for her profession, also because his mother worked in the same profession. However, this does not arouse sympathy from the cleaning lady; on the contrary, the distrustful interlocutor sees it as a trick.
How to be Andrzej Seweryn and not go crazy? How to address people, how to talk to cleaners and journalists? How to save domesticity in a community?
Watching scenes featuring Seweryn's grandson; scenes in which a grandfather is having fun with his grandson and how happy he is then, or when discovering the actor in his relationship with his wife, Katarzyna Kubacka-Seweryn, one feels that it is possible. That maybe this is a film about love after all. How it changes the feeling, how it transforms.
I knew Andrzej Seweryn professionally before he met his current wife, so I dare say that without her such a film would never have been made. Seweryn changed radically around his wife. He relaxed.
Without Kubacka, also the producer of the documentary, Andrzej Seweryn would undoubtedly be the same great artist, but privately we liked him maybe a little less.
8/10
“I am a fictional character”, dir. Arkadiusz Bartosiak, Poland 2024.