“Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel.” Nearly 175 years have passed since tuberculosis claimed Frederic Chopin at 39. Yet, his famous words continue to echo, and his melancholic music endures.
Across the world, wherever a child is introduced to Western melody, the poet of the piano holds his hand through the alleys of etudes, preludes, ballads, and mazurkas to reach the final goal: simplicity.
The son of Poland, whose heart rests in a church in Warsaw, has been a subject of numerous cinematic and literary portrayals. This week, the seventh edition of Habitat International Film Festival comes to a close with the pulsating biopic of the virtuoso. Helmed by noted Polish filmmaker Michal Kwiecinski, Chopin, A Sonata in Paris (Polish title: Chopin Chopin!) captures the genius of the maestro in the Romantic Period without submitting to his stature. It seeks to find the scarred soul of the musician whose compositions continue to heal the world. The film, according to Kwiecinski, tries to demystify the pale, ethereal, suffering-poet cliché and present a more energetic, socially magnetic, sexually charismatic, fame-savvy Chopin.
Filmmaker Michal Kwiecinski
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Starring the young, intense Eryk Kulm in the lead role, the film showcases Chopin’s rumbustious association with strong, independent women with tuberculosis playing the villain of the piece. Along the way, we learn how the illness and desire came together to define his music. Discussing the film’s emotional and visual design, the filmmaker asserts that earlier depictions of Chopin presented him and his music as ‘slow’ while his research suggests otherwise. He wanted to present Chopin as “a rockstar of his times” whom society loved. “He was active and spontaneous, a king of society,” Kwiecinski says.
He compares the Parisian society’s struggle with cholera and tuberculosis, as we took time to figure out COVID-19. “People didn’t know how to deal with the illness and fell to superstitions and shamans to find a cure.” The illness, he holds, affected the musician’s romantic pursuits and created a complex bond between the idea and expression of love that takes a mercurial shape on screen.
Chopin, Kwiencinski feels, “transported the emotion of love into music rather than to the person.” The melancholy finds expression through his visual design as well. Sunlight, a potion for a wilting Chopin, becomes a metaphor for hope that shines through his window when it is too late.
Discussing Chopin’s open relationship with French novelist George Sand, Kwiecinski notes that she sought closeness to the genius but didn’t wish to bind him in a defined relationship. “In her letters to Chopin’s friend, she writes she didn’t mind him with other women as long as he continued to provide her intellectual stimulation.”
Kwiecinski, who has been to India many times, is eager to showcase the biopic in the film-and-music-crazy country. He says he has a script about a Polish businessman and an Indian worker set in Kolkata, and he’s eager to make it happen.
Chopin, A Sonata in Paris will be screened on March 22 at the Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, 6pm. To register log on to indiahabitat.org/hiff2026.