Everyone Is A Riddle: Maciej Kawalski On His Short Film "Atlas"
Maciej Kawalski is an award-winning writer/director and a Doctor of Medicine. His latest short film, Atlas, stars Tomasz Kot (Cold War) and takes aim at mental health, identity, and perception. This wonderful comedy took home the top prizes at Bermuda International Film Festival and Huesca International Film Festival.
A remote psychiatric hospital receives a fascinating patient — he doesn’t move nor speak but spends his days standing with his hands up. The only thing known is his nickname — “Atlas”. In a word, he is a riddle and a riveting one at that.
Atlas has won an array of accolades including the Audience Award at the Opole Film Festival and the Best Short Multimedia Polska Award at the Gdynia Film Festival in Poland, and features stunning cinematography by Pawel Dyllus and music by Lukasz Targosz. We had the opportunity to talk with Maciej about the film, his background in medicine, working with Tomasz Kot, and much much more!
I love the concept of the film; it makes you laugh, but it also makes you think. How did you come up with this zany idea?
I had been studying Medicine when I decided to apply to a film school. I was in my the third year of Medical University, and at the time I had a course in Clinical Psychiatry. It involved shifts in real hospitals, meeting actual patients. The patient meeting who impressed me the most was a catatonic man that spent his entire days standing motionless. Nobody knew why he did that.
What fascinated me was how drawn people were to fill the gaps in his story. After a week or so after his admission, the other patients, the medical personnel, the students started to spread ‘informed gossip’ about him. It was as if people could not stand someone being a blank page, and since he didn't write up his story, people invented it.
It was both funny and thought provoking to see how flimsy the structure of our identity is — it’s just a story we tell ourselves, or which others tell about us.
In the course of writing the script, I started with modeling the stories I had heard and then added my larger-than-life version.
Ultimately I wanted to make a film about getting unstuck, about reclaiming the agency in our lives. I think we all need such a push from time to time.
What did your background in medicine bring to this project?
It brought the world and the main character. I wouldn’t have had access to that microscopic universe of a psychiatric ward otherwise.
Secondly, I badly wanted to justify studying Film Directing and Medicine simultaneously, so I started to look for lessons that one career-path can exchange with the other.
My take-away was paying attention to people, listening to them with undivided attention and without judgement. I believe it is the core foundation of both being a doctor and a film director.
You’re trying to hear people out and help them get better.
When writing, I try to look at fictional characters as if they were patients I’m trying to diagnose. You would start with taking down their history, listening to their version of the story and what ails them; then look for symptoms, for evidence to substantiate or disprove what they say. Then you would make a test of some sort. In writing such a test would be to put the character under unexpected condition and see how does he or she react. What are they hiding?
Everyone is a riddle.
What is it about this story that resonates with you the most?
To me, it’s a matter of identity and getting unstuck. If we don’t own and ‘write’ identity somebody will do it for us. Every time. And they won’t ask if the one they invent is a one you like or not.
To me, this story is about Atlas growing up to taking his identity into his own hands and owning it. And yes — the process of doing that can ‘shake things up.’ That’s the price of getting unblocked.
What do you want audiences to take away from the film?
Own your story, or it will own you.
If you tell yourself you’re stuck — you’re stuck. If you tell yourself you’re sick — you’re sick. If, like Atlas, you tell yourself you cannot move — you cannot.
But I believe that just as Atlas we all have the capacity to drop the old story and forge a new one — a more powerful one, a happier one. To get unblocked and reclaim our lives. But be prepared for an earthquake while you’re at it.
How did you come in contact with Tomasz Kot, and what was it like working with him?
When it came to casting Atlas, the first actor I had in mind was Tomasz Kot. We didn't know each other personally beforehand, but my casting director passed him the script, and he liked it enough to arrange a meeting. We met at a restaurant and were supposed to talk it over over lunch. Half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. We ended up talking for over three hours! It was then that I was sure if that film was to be made, Atlas had to be Tomasz.
Working with Tomasz was every director’s dream! It is a gift to work with such talents, as they take your idea and carry it way further than you thought possible.
The psychiatric hospital location is really stunning. How did you come across that?
It was a loooong search. It took a year, a few locations scouts, and a couple dozen abandoned hospitals, forgotten palaces, medieval castles and mountain shelters to find the perfect location finally. Atlas was shot in a XII century monastery in which at some point there really was a psychiatric hospital! That last bit added a touch of magic to our thinking of that place.
I love the shot moving out of the window that becomes an overhead aerial view of the psychiatric hospital. How did you and your team pull that one off?
I had this shot in my mind long before the set, so it was prepared well. It was a cooperation of the cinematographer, the VFX supervisor on set, and an excellent drone pilot, who was able to fly heart-stoppingly close to the face of the building.
Making the aerial shot had an added nail-biting aspect to it since at the last minute the battery jack turned out to be broken and to take off the pilot hotwired a camera battery to power the drone. It was a real MacGyver solution, and I remember expecting the drone to crash any second.
What can you tell us about your debut feature, Gentlemen of Zakopane?
Cannot wait to film it!
Joseph Conrad and three other notorious Polish artists wake up after a crazy bohemian party with a dead man on their couch, and not a shred of a clue who is that and why is he dead.
The main character is a doctor of medicine who has to face a couple of murders and two revolutionary plots to figure if he was meant to be a doctor after all.
So as you see, despite my best effort, I’m still dealing with medicine in a way.
It is a dark, slightly surreal comedy, and to paraphrase your first question, I hope that, just as Atlas, it will make you laugh, but it will also make you think.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!