Agnieszka Holland: I remember well the moment when I realized that I was not as brave as I thought. [FRAGMENT]

Grzegorz Markowski: Was there a moment in your life when you were really afraid?

Agnieszka Holland: In fact, I’ve been scared a few times in my life. But I wasn’t actually that scared until I had my baby, or more precisely, until I got pregnant. I started to be afraid when I realized that it would be a child and that something very bad could happen to this child, that it could be born sick or dead, or something else terrible could happen to it. I don’t know, she’ll fall out of the bed or… The whole range of fears that mothers in spe and functioning mothers know suddenly appeared to me.

And it was a shock. It was such a feeling that I had lost my innocence, that before I could not be afraid. Of course, I had moments of fear before. I well remember the moment when I realized that I was not as brave as I thought. And this moment came to me in a dream. It was related to the political situation in Czechoslovakia, where I studied after 1968. In August, troops from the Warsaw Pact countries entered Czechoslovakia. My husband and I got to the center of Prague, because we lived in the suburbs, and there we saw a lot of tanks, and somewhere further away they were shooting. And I ran to where they were shooting because I was very curious about it all. It seemed to me that everything was so exciting and so scary, but at the same time so special that I wanted to be there and see it, and I wasn’t afraid at all, but Laco* was dragging me to the gates and was not happy with my bravado. Some time later I had a dream. After this spurt and the belief that we would win ended and there was resignation. I had a dream that Russians came to the dormitory where we lived, took us to a small cemetery near the church, and told us all to lie on our backs. They gave us tablets, just like they had in old schools, and chalk. And on these little tablets we were supposed to write: “Long live the Soviet Union” and put it on our chests. And those who do not write it will be shot. I became terribly afraid because I realized that they were not joking and that they could actually murder us. And Laco, my husband at the time, was lying next to me and said, “No, I won’t write it.” I say: “Laco, come on, don’t be silly. They’re just words. They’ll write it down and it won’t matter. You won’t die for it.”

And he looked at me and shook his head. And I understood that he was brave and I wasn’t really brave, when it wasn’t about bravado, but about some serious decision. And the awareness that I would chicken out in such an extreme situation was very strong. I woke up with the realization that my idea of ​​myself was not true.

Agnieszka Holland on the set of the film ‘Europa, Europa’ Photo Sławomir Sierzputowski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

GM: And if we went back to that moment of thinking about the child, was it fear for the child, for you with the child who, for example, might be sick? Were you afraid of the thought of yourself or him?

AH: No, I think it was about the child. You know I couldn’t imagine spending my whole life with a sick child. This fear materialized. When Kasia was born and was a few months old, we went for walks with a girl friend who had a slightly older child. Before Kasia was born, I saw an educational film about phenylketonuria, it is a rare genetic disease in which the child is born, looks completely healthy, but due to genetic errors, if the child is not immediately fed according to a specific diet, the symptoms occur quite quickly. brain changes and severe disability. And that there are possible tests for it. We both gave birth in the hospital on Madalińskiego Street. I wasn’t sure whether they were already doing these tests there or not. That’s what I was saying to Sonia: “Listen, I’m not sure. I was a little afraid that maybe they didn’t do these tests.” And she says, “No, they don’t do these tests there, but you know, it’s very easy to see, because when a child has it, he pees blue.” And that same evening I was washing diapers, because back then you washed diapers, cloth ones, in the bathtub – we didn’t have a washing machine – and suddenly I saw that all these diapers were blue.

Katarzyna Kasia: Oh my!

AH: Then it turned out that someone had thrown a printed Slovak napkin into the laundry, which is navy blue with white patterns, and that it had dyed it all. And it was this moment of terrible fear that what I was most afraid of came true. Because people have this magical thinking that if you are afraid of something, it means that it is already somewhere, waiting and will come true.

KK: There is something like that. But tell me, because the fear that appears really completely changes your thinking when you are pregnant and then when the child is born… I have a question for you: your child is already big, but is it the case that in some When does it somehow relax? Does it pass?

AH: Yes, this kind of connection and certain fear remains, but it is no longer as overwhelming as with a small child or even a teenager. However, this fear for the child changes everything and forever. Kasia went to the cinema once and somehow never came back. And suddenly there was terrible fear. I was already seeing the worst of everything. And then I realized that this fear for the child had taken away something very important from me, that is, my independence from fear, the belief that I could decide for myself and take risks.

KK: And what about risk-taking, fear and courage in your daughter?

AH: She was quite cautious, unlike me. Maybe that’s why I was afraid, because I was just such a child, experimenting… And I did different things with my friends, mainly with my friends. I formed such a gang and we did various dangerous things, such as jumping from a height or sledding so as to cross the road that was in the middle of the hill, so as to pass right in front of the car.

GM: Who came up with the ideas?

AH: Well, I would say me, but I’m not sure. Possibly a stupid boy, but I took up the challenge. Other girls didn’t do such stupid things, but I did.

KK: And Kasia?

AH: No, Kasia has always been careful. She started crawling very early, when she was, I don’t know, about eight or nine months old. She looked like a wind-up Chinese toy that went crazy so quickly. And once I left a ladder standing in the middle of the room because it was a high apartment and to change a light bulb you needed a big ladder. I put it down and went out to the kitchen for a moment. And when I came back, Kasia was balancing at the top of that ladder.

Agnieszka Holland with her daughter Kasia Adamik Photo Photo Agata Grzybowska / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

KK: Oh my!

AH: I don’t know how it happened!

GM: I’ll go back to the moment of pregnancy. You talked about research, about tests, about the question of what might happen to this child. Today it is a very topical topic. From several men who decide in which direction Poland is heading, we hear this proposition addressed to women: “Be brave, accept what fate brings you, you will cope, and we will help you.” This is a story about courage?

AH: No, this is a story about deception, I mean no one knows if he can cope with something like this, and there is no reason for him to choose such a fate, because it is a terribly difficult fate. And for me it’s hard to imagine, because even though I’m quite empathetic and have the instinct to help people close and distant, I don’t have Samaritan tendencies. For example, the fact that I would have to devote myself completely to the care of a palliative patient, a child or an elderly person is difficult for me to imagine. I don’t know if I could handle it. No, I don’t think so.

KK: But do you think it’s possible to force someone to be brave? That courage can be decreed? To tell a person, “You know what, now you have to be brave”?

AH: I think that our imagination, even the imagination of empathetic or imaginative people, has its limits. We can imagine that someone would find themselves in such a situation, but it is very difficult to imagine that I myself will be faced with such a final choice, and I certainly cannot be sure how I will perform. Just like we’re not sure how much pain we can endure.

GM: Although you said at the beginning of our conversation that you were running towards the shots, not from the shots. You said about that scene in Prague that maybe it was still youth. So let’s look for an example of an act of courage – your act of courage – in a situation in which you said: “I was already a mature person then.”

AH: This story I told you, the story about the dream, is the moment of my maturity. This is the realization that I am not who I would like to be after reading numerous books that I have read since I was little. That my vision of myself is not as attractive and perfect as I imagined. This is what I consider maturity.

GM: Or maybe in Poland it is courage to part with this romantic vision, the definition of courage? That this is courage – to abandon it.

AH: You know, I would say “yes” if we had a lot of brave people now. Unfortunately, over the last seven or eight years it has turned out that we live in a country where basic values ​​that seemed extremely important to us as a community, a community, a nation, however you want to define it, are rapidly disappearing. And I don’t see any crazy acts of courage outside a very narrow group of people with a specific character, so to speak, a specific mental structure. In general, as a nation, we are a complete mess. I don’t see this courage, even – what’s more – I see incredible cowardice in some matters that do not require great courage. Conformism that has so outgrown the social fabric that people lower their voices when they say something completely obvious.

KK: Let me quote something to you. This is not an author you would probably listen to every day, also regarding courage and certain changes that sometimes take place deep in people. Jan Pietrzak once wrote that a body immersed in shit loses courage**. And I think it’s kind of about how the deeper into the shit you are, the harder it is to get the courage to do it. I know this isn’t your bard, but I thought maybe…

AH: I don’t know what Archimedes would say about that.

GM: Let’s see if there’s anything more we can add to the feeling that we are indeed immersed in shit. We probably like to think of ourselves as brave?

AH: Most people like to think of themselves as superior, right? And the Poles have Somosierra, for our and your freedom, and various stones for the rampart. We have a romantic vision of our mission and our courage, even fatal, but so beautiful.

Seven wishes. Conversations about sources of hope promotional materials of Znak Publishing House

* Laco Adamík, real name Ladislav Adamík – Slovak-Polish theater, film and opera director. Former husband of Agnieszka Holland, father of director and artist Katarzyna Maria Adamik.

** J. Pietrzak for “TS”: Personal survey, “Tygodnik Solidarność” 2017, no. 18.