Following the Traces of Childhood. The “Jugglery” of Memory in Wojciech Marczewski’s Weiser (2000)

Abstract

The subject of the article is Wojciech Marczewski’s film Weiser (2000), based on Paweł Huelle’s novel, which explores the problems of memory and oblivion. The author indicates the differences between the cinematic adaptation and the literary prototype that are connected with the strategy of constructing the main characters and modifications of the time and place of the action. Afterwards, Jalocha describes the relationship between image, memory and imagination. Analyzing the formal construction of Weiser, she names the means of cinematic expression that allow to imitate the work of memory. She characterizes the contrast between the lanes of the past and present established in the film, the structure of flashbacks, the way of introducing them into the narration and, based on the scope of subjectivity, she divides retrospections into two sub-categories. Jałocha refers to Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenology of memory, that is the notion of trace and the aporia of presentabsent. When interpreting the film, she takes into consideration the characters’ motivations, their attitudes towards the past, the influence of ‘what has been’ on the present, the nature of the process of reconstructing the truth about the bygone events. She also identifies the motives used in the film that are linked with memory, such as photography and archives. Additionally, the author shows different functions assigned to the character of Weiser: he may be seen as a figure of the Other, the metaphor of childhood and the past seen in terms of an enigma. Marchewski’s films, as Jalocha argues, both on the level of plot and formal organization, thematize the memory and its limitations as well as the inaccessibility of the past founded on the difference between ‘here/now’ and ‘there/then’.