The Scar

Krzysztof Kieslowski's feature film debut, The Scar presages his future triumphs Camera Buff and Blind Chance in its even-handed social critique and richly personal characterizations. A former documentary filmmaker, Kieslowski here weaves a story of contradiction, compromise and hypocrisy that is both objective and incisive. As a drama of the shifting fortunes of a massive rural factory project. The Scar pits community against government, environment against industry and ambition against responsibility. "Is everything under control?" demands an ambitious small town Polish Communist official preparing to receive a delegation from Warsaw. At stake is a large fertilizer factory contract that would mean hundreds of jobs for a dirt poor rural province. But winning the contract created more problems than it solves as politicians, environmentalists, displaced citizens and journalists alike inadvertently plumb the gap between rigid state socialism and the anarchy of human nature. Builder turned reluctant factory director Stefan Bednarz' "quiet conscience" becomes the moral center of a sprawling, Altmanesque human tapestry of greed, petty conspiracy and self-righteous grudge holding. Whether in the adversarial relationship between Bednarz and his journalist nemesis, the mother-hen buffoonery of Bednarz's local political counterparts, or the selfish flailing of Communist Party underlings and workers, The Scar is a trenchant and sensitive portrait of society haplessly mired in its own ideology.