MOVIES : Past, Present . . . Future? : Krzysztof Kieslowski, director of ‘The Decalogue’ and recent ‘Blue’/ ‘White’/ ‘Red’ trilogy, looks at love, politics, religion and meaning in life-- before and after film.

With the success of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Red,” American moviegoers have been introduced to a filmmaker long acknowledged throughout Europe as one of the late 20th Century’s great geniuses of cinema. The third segment in a trilogy examining the principles represented by the colors of the French flag (liberty, equality and fraternity), “Red,” which was preceded last year by the release of “Blue” and “White,” is quintessential Kieslowski.

Depicting life as a series of moral conflicts capable of producing moments of transcendence, his films couch complex philosophical questions in simple fables set among the European middle class. His greatest work, and the one he’ll no doubt be remembered for, is “The Decalogue,” a dauntingly ambitious 10-film cycle exploring the Ten Commandments and how they can be seen operating today in the lives of tenants of a Warsaw apartment complex.

“The Decalogue” premiered on Polish television in 1988 but is embroiled in a legal fight that prevents its commercial release in the United States. The few who manage to see it don’t forget it. “Filmmaking simply doesn’t get any better than this,” said Times film critic Kenneth Turan after attending a screening held last year as part of the American Film Institute Film Festival. Fans of this magnificent work were, needless to say, saddened by Kieslowski’s vow that “Red” will be his final film.

The director--subject of a recently published autobiography, “Kieslowski on Kieslowski,” written with Danusia Stok--was born in Warsaw in 1941 and grew up amid the rubble of World War II under Poland’s oppressive post-Stalinist regime. After an aborted career as a firefighter, he enrolled at the Lodz Film School and graduated with a degree in 1969, the same year he married his wife, Marysia Kieslowska, with whom he has a daughter.

After devoting the next seven years to documentaries chronicling Polish life, he released his debut feature, “The Scar,” in 1976, then completed three more features before embarking on “The Decalogue” in 1984.

Briefly in Los Angeles to attend the ceremony for the L.A. Film Critics Awards, which honored “Red” as this past year’s best foreign film, Kieslowski greets a visitor in his Hollywood hotel room with the apologetic confession “I’m sorry--I’m a smoker,” as he proceeds to light up. “The last of the Mohicans,” one jokes in response, to which Kieslowski replies: “But the last will be the first--that’s from the Bible. I did ‘The Decalogue,’ you know.” Following are Kieslowski’s thoughts on God, guilt, politics and living in the real world.

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Question: Did you read the Bible in preparing to make “The Decalogue”?

Answer: Naturally I read it, but I’d read it prior to that--I was raised in a Catholic country.

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Q: Did Catholicism mean anything to you?

A: Yes, it did--as for whether it still does, all I’ll say is that I still live in a Catholic country. During the years of communism in Poland, many people turned to the church as an antidote to communism, and the church became identified with the struggle for freedom. My solution when martial law came to Poland in 1981, however, was to sleep--I slept for almost an entire year. It was the only way to cope.

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Q: Do you believe in God?

A: Something exists over there. Is that something benevolent, malevolent or indifferent? Let’s just say something’s been asleep for a long time, and maybe one day it will wake up.

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Q: Other than the Catholic Church, what played a role in shaping your sense of morality?

A: I wouldn’t say Catholicism was important to me in that regard. It had more to do with the fact that early on I became independent in my thinking. My parents weren’t intellectuals--my father was an engineer and my mother was a clerk--so I attribute my ability to take a broader view of life to luck, and to the fact that I worked hard for this. Of course, life is simpler when one has a narrow focus, but it’s not as interesting, and one of the main reasons we’re here is to live interesting lives. It takes courage to be curious about life, but I think people are courageous.

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Q: In your book, you express the belief that people are basically good; on what evidence do you base this belief?

A: I draw this conclusion because I don’t meet bad people. Yes, people behave selfishly, with cowardice and stupidity, but they do so because they find themselves in situations where they have no other option. They create traps for themselves, and there’s no escape. People don’t want to be dishonest--life forces them into it.

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Q: That suggests you don’t believe there are absolutes of good and evil, that those things are always relative and in a state of flux. Is that your belief?

A: No, I don’t believe in relativism. There are absolutes of good and evil.

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Q: Is the human race evolving over the centuries?

A: In the technological realm, yes, but as to whether man has a more refined sense of morality today than he had two centuries ago, obviously not. If you look at the Greeks, you see the same questions and problems we struggle with today, and no philosopher or artist has been able to answer these questions. These questions are only answered by religion, but the answers religion offers are merely theoretical. So the questions remain unanswered.

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Q: Who’s your favorite philosopher?

A: At the moment I’m reading Kierkegaard, and I find him exciting and provocative, but I can’t say he’s my favorite. I much prefer Kant.

(Nineteenth-Century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, considered one of the founders of Existentialism, believed that religious faith is irrational. Immanuel Kant, an 18th-Century German philosopher who concerned himself with ethics, aesthetics and the nature and limits of human knowledge, believed it was man’s duty to live morally.)

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Q: Have you ever had a religious experience?

A: Yes, the first time I went to confession. The thing that was transcendent about it was the feeling of being relieved of guilt. Unfortunately, it never worked for me that way again, so now dealing with guilt is difficult.

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Q: Is everyone afflicted with guilt?

A: Some people aren’t afflicted with feelings of guilt, but we are all guilty.

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Q: You once said, “Although justice and equality sound exciting, it’s simply not possible, because I’ve never met anybody who wanted to be equal. Everybody wants to be a little more equal in everything--to have a better car, more money, a slightly better house.” One could make the case that not everyone is driven by greed and egotistical needs.

A: It’s a proven fact that it’s human nature to want to be better than others, and that eliminates the possibility of equality--it’s pure logic. You may not want to be better than I am, but I imagine you do want to be better than your colleagues. And there’s another aspect to this that’s even more significant: You want to be better than you are.

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Q: Does romantic love bring out the best or the worst in people?

A: Love always has two faces: the horrible and the beautiful. The beautiful face creates an impulse to share something profound, while the horrible face creates jealousy which can degenerate into hatred. This is the same all over the world--we’re all neurotic about love because it’s a very egotistical experience.

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Q: What are you incapable of being sensible about?

A: Politics. Yes, I left Poland because of the political situation there and moved to Paris, but I returned, and that decision could be described as less than sensible. Why did I return? Because it’s my country. Ideally, we’d all feel ourselves citizens of the world, but life doesn’t work that way. I came to understand this not long ago, one evening in Paris. I was standing on a balcony and two people were quarreling in the street below. A woman was crying, a man was hitting a boy, and though I understood the words, I couldn’t understand what it was about. I realized that were I watching a similar scene take place in Poland, I would’ve understood, and that’s when I knew I should live in Poland.

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Q: Ideally, how should films function in the culture? What should they do?

A: Film is often just business--I understand that, and it’s not something I concern myself with. But if film aspires to be part of culture, it should do the things great literature, music and art do: elevate the spirit, help us understand ourselves and the life around us and give people the feeling they are not alone. Loneliness is one of the central problems culture must address.

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Q: Does film shape the culture or simply reflect it as it already exists?

A: It does both, but it should shape--the question, of course, is whether it shapes it positively or negatively. Films like “La Strada” and “Citizen Kane” were positive forces because they gave a feeling of community, but there are many other films that shape destructively.

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Q: Do movies create false expectations of life?

A: No. Movies photograph the false expectations.

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Q: What aspect of filmmaking was the most enjoyable for you?

A: Although I love actors and actresses, there was only one part of filmmaking I liked, and that was editing. The stress of shooting is over and I find myself in a room with all this film that holds countless possibilities. The aspects of filmmaking that were most unpleasant were location scouting and promotion, although doing promotion can be interesting in that in speaking to critics and journalists, I learn interpretations of my films that had never occurred to me. Film has a life of its own and can take on meanings the director didn’t consciously put there--this is a very magical and wonderful thing. The parts of promotion I don’t like are the festivals, TV lights and crowds of people.

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Q: Have your feelings changed about your decision to no longer make films?

A: No. This isn’t to suggest I feel I “completed” my work as a filmmaker--such a thing is impossible. Rather, I choose not to make movies because I want to live.

One lives in a fictional world when making movies, and I have nothing against this because it’s very beautiful to live in fiction. When you make movies, everything is fiction--the script, the shooting; it’s all illusory, and it fills your life to the point that you start to take fiction for real life. I was having a hard time seeing the difference between fiction and reality and that’s why I decided to stop. I think it’s important to understand that difference because maybe real life is more important than the fictive life we create.

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Q: Having put film behind you, what’s a typical day like for you?

A: I don’t have a typical day, but if I were at my country house, which is where I most like to be, I wake in the morning and there is snow on the ground, so I turn on the snow-clearing machine so I can move my car. (Kieslowski’s country home, which he built himself, is in northeast Poland.) Then I warm up the soup my wife prepared and left in the fridge, do a bit of writing, then I go to bed. That may sound boring measured against the turbulent life of a filmmaker, but I yearn to be bored.

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Q: How did you feel about the academy’s decision not to allow “Red” to compete in this year’s Oscar race? (Submitted as a Swiss film, “Red” was disqualified from competition on the grounds that too few of the people in creative control of the film were of Swiss descent.)

A: I found it confusing. Last year “Blue” wasn’t allowed to compete on the basis of language--the question of creative control wasn’t an issue last year. This year they won’t allow “Red” to compete on the basis of creative control, but language isn’t an issue. I don’t know if “Red” deserves to win an Oscar, or even deserves to be nominated, but I do think it deserves to be treated with equality, and the rules seem peculiarly flexible.

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Q: You’ve commented that one of the questions you hoped to raise with your recent trilogy was: Exactly what is freedom for the individual? Do you have an answer to that question?

A: Freedom as an abstract idea is a trap because it directs you toward solitude, and solitude and loneliness is hell. The acceptance of one’s own limits is a kind of freedom, because if we can accept ourselves as we really are with all our faults, it helps us accept life with all its difficulties. This kind of acceptance is very difficult to achieve, of course.

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Q: What’s the most one can hope for in life?

A: I can only speak for myself, but what I hope for is peace. This is something we all experience in fleeting moments, but ultimately it’s not achievable. It wouldn’t be interesting to achieve it, though, because it’s the pursuit of it that has meaning.