Thanks to reader Steven Carlson for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run in two weeks) see the bottom of this post.

When watching foreign-language films, it can be illustrative to look at their original titles. For example, the original title of Krzystzof Kieslowski’s early film Camera Buff is Amator, which roughly translates as Amateur. The difference between the two titles is telling. Whereas Camera Buff implies that the title character is a hobbyist or an enthusiast, the word “amateur” implies something more than that. The common definition of “amateur” is “non-professional”, but the root of the word is the Latin “amator”, or “lover.” In other words, someone who does something out of love.

Watching Camera Buff for the first time recently, I kept coming back to this idea, since for the film’s protagonist Filip Mosz (Jerzy Stuhr), making films is much more than a job. He first buys the camera to film his new baby girl, but soon gets the attention of his local party boss, who asks him to document the anniversary of his factory. Before he knows it, Filip has become a filmmaker- bankrolled by the party, traveling to film festivals, appearing on television, meeting major figures like Krzystzof Zanussi. All the while, Filip seems more than a little overwhelmed by the attention.

At one point in the film, Filip tells a coworker likens his filmmaking to stamp collecting. However, his behavior tells a different story. Once he picks up his camera at the beginning of the film, we rarely see Filip in a context that doesn’t involve filmmaking. When he’s at home, he’s usually reading a movie magazine or shooting footage out the window, much to the consternation of his wife, who finds herself attending to her newborn daughter alone. Meanwhile, the party boss becomes dismayed by the films Filip is making, as when he shoots a short film about a dwarf who works at the factory. The boss wonders if Filip might be holding his subject up to ridicule, but the look in his eyes says something different altogether. Could Filip be making a subversive work on the factory’s dime?

What gets Filip into trouble is that he can’t quite find a way to put the camera down for long enough to live his life. The very act of filming requires one to maintain a certain distance from the world around him. After all, how can everyone see what’s being shot unless the cameraman steps back to take it all in? However, this also distances Filip from his wife, who finds that she can no longer take his new vocation. When he leaves for his first film festival, she calls out from the train platform, “don’t win!” This isn’t because she doesn’t love him, but because she fears she’s losing him to his camera.

Early in the film, the boss quotes Lenin, who said, “cinema is the first art.” More than any other art form, movies connect deeply with people, and Filip’s work is no exception. His coworkers love him, the dwarf cries when the film about him is broadcast on television, and when a friend’s mother passes away, the first thing he asks Filip is to show him a film he shot of his mother when she was alive. Seeing the film, he remarks, “what you do is beautiful.”

But the party boss has a different point of view, seeing Filip’s work as potentially inflammatory. The film about the dwarf seems harmless enough, but it doesn’t necessarily put forth the image the Party wants. Even more troubling is Filip’s latest project, in which he peers behind the refurbished facades of the local buildings to reveal the crumbling structures behind them. In the film’s key scene, the boss takes Filip for a drive and talks to him not like a stern autocrat, but as someone who’s just pragmatic enough to know better than the rock the boat. “Public life cannot always withstand the light of day,” he says, before revealing that the local cultural minister- one of Filip’s friends and supporters- will be replaced because of Filip’s work.

Afterwards, he speaks with the fired minister, who assures him, “something good has awoken in you. Cultivate it.” But Filip isn’t strong enough to be responsible for his friend’s dismissal or for the resulting fallout from his construction exposé. So rather than facing this responsibility, he sabotages his own film and retreats, camera in hand, into his own life. Trouble is, most of it is gone, his wife and child having moved away. In the film’s final shot, Filip turns the camera on himself and remembers his wife and child- a touch that’s devastating both because of how much he’s lost and because of how pathetic it is that he still feels the need to cling to that camera.

Camera Buff lacks the ethereal quality that would distinguish most of Kieslowski’s later films, but given the oppressive regime under which he worked, perhaps that was for the best. Here, Kieslowski is largely concerned with telling one man’s story. One of the most interesting aspects of the story is how singleminded it is, charting the path taken by Filip as his love for filmmaking consumes his life. There’s almost nothing in the film that doesn’t have something to do with Filip’s vocation-turned-obsession, and more than once I was surprised by how elliptical the storytelling was, with months passing between some scenes. I was reminded of Hitchcock’s famous quote, “cinema is life with the boring bits cut out.” Unfortunately for Filip, those boring bits he missed were his life, passing him by.

So, what movie would you like me to review for the next installment of Reviews by Request? Let me know in the comments section below. To refresh your memory, here are the rules for requesting a movie to be reviewed: (1) it has to be a movie I haven’t seen, (2) it has to be available through Netflix, and (3) please only request one film. Other than that, anything is fair game. First to suggest a movie that qualifies gets their requested review. See you in two weeks!