Today I watched a film I’ve never seen before — a 2020 Hungarian film by Lili Horvat called “Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time.” I watched it this morning, thought it was heavily Kieslowski inspired, found an interview with Horvat where she admitted the influence, then watched the movie again this afternoon.

I don’t do that often — and checked out the movie a second time because I wasn’t sure if I fully understood the plot the first time around. The movie does a very skillful job of making the audience question what we’re seeing — the protagonist of the film is worried about her mental health and thinks she might have invented a love story with a man, moving from the U.S. to Hungary for no good reason.

On second viewing, the movie actually turns out to be more conventional than I’d hoped, especially in the final half hour. What Horvat has not mastered yet is the way Kieslowski leaves space for mystery. In his later films, he works hard to prevent tidy outcomes — he wants us to bring our own theories about what happens in key moments.

This is not a skill Kieslowski had at the beginning of his career. I think the process of making The Dekalog — the grind of putting together 10 completely unique shortish-films — made him into a highly economical filmmaker. Slavoj Zizek has this theory that the Polish censorship process worked in Kieslowski’s favor, because he had to be more creative in the way he broached certain subjects. But Zizek is wrong. It wasn’t censorship that made Kieslowski a great filmmaker, it was the extreme volume of work and the craftsmanship that developed from making so many films in a concentrate amount of time.

“No End” is proof that Zizek is wrong and I’m right. It’s the last film he made before “The Dekalog” and, as I’ve mentioned before, it includes so many elements of his greater works to come, including many of the themes. But as I’ve also pointed out, Kieslowski was not a cinematic master yet when he made this movie.

This segment begins with a shot of a bunch of card tables on a Polish sidewalk with lots of candles lit on them. Perhaps the Polish audience would recognize the importance of this scene right away — I assume it’s religious in nature. The only connection we can make to the main plot is seeing Ula’s Volkswagen Beetle drive by these tables, and you have to look very closely to see this detail.

In the next shot, the Volkswagen starts to sputter. It seems like the electric system has shut down and Ula has to pull the car over. As she sits on the side of the road, a white Mercedes speeds by and beeps at her. After a few seconds, she tries the car again, and what do you know, it works fine. This is not the kind of malfunction common in a car — if an electric system shuts down, it’s usually something very serious and it won’t fix itself.

She drive on and not too much farther down the road, she sees the white Mercedes plowed into the side of a bus. She gets to the site of the accident and pulls over. There’s a horrible scene of a dead man pulled from the car. We see the black dog standing in the intersection and when Ula puts her hand on the front of her car, she gets some black tar on her hand.

I think black tar is supposed to indicate that something was inside the hood of the car and temporarily sabotaged it so that she wouldn’t get into that accident. But Kieslowski’s love of detail betrays him in this case. The engine for a Volkswagen Beetle was actually in the rear of the car — the hood served as that car’s trunk.

Ok, the crash scene was overtly religious in a way Kieslowski will avoid in the future — even in the Dekalog. But next we move on to the apartment of Joanna Stach, whose husband is on trial for the illegal strike. I don’t actually know why Ula has decided to go to that apartment. She didn’t bring the case file. She just met this woman and a new lawyer has been chosen. It doesn’t make sense for her to involve herself further in this matter.

The black dog is walking around the car as it is parked outside. There are a couple family friends who seem to be involved in politics at the apartment with Joanna, discussing a police search of the apartment, some personal effects that were taken, and how to request their return.

She mostly just listens to what happens, but then she takes out the list of lawyers and shows Joanna the question mark next to Labrador … which just gives her the opportunity to offer the spooky suggestion that this is Antek’s way of suggesting not to hire Labrador. So that’s why she’s there? After suggesting Labrador, to now retract it because of a question mark she can’t explain?

Joanna then dismisses that idea with a half laugh, saying that thought is stupid. Ula then offers to give a man at the meeting a ride to the Institute, where he is receiving cancer treatments.

The scene then jumps to Labrador, in his office with his assistant, going through the case file evidence, including the hidden note. The assistant gets a phone call at the office, which seems to annoy Labrador, he becomes annoyed at something during the call, then races off. The scene ends with Labrador staring directly at the camera. In the next scene, which I’ll pick up in the next essay, Dariusz Stach, the man on trial for the illegal strike, is also staring at the camera, making for a clever edit (and a preview of Artur Barcis role of The Watcher throughout the Dekalog.)

I’m finding it much more difficult to write about a movie as flawed as “No Exit,” but I hope this process eventually leads to a good reason for examining this one in depth.