Kristijonas Vildžiūnas has come up with another oneiric story, this time about a middle-aged man who navigates between being trapped in an elevator with a complex exit system and facing his intimate realm, between the inner and outer world. We met him at the Warsaw Film Festival for the world premiere of Dice-Ching-O-Mat, to discuss the personal experience he wanted to translate in the film, the challenge of being truly present, as well as the influence of Stalker and Fitzcarraldo on his cinematic style.

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Cineuropa: Your main character suffers from a form of amnesia rooted in an identity crisis, and perhaps workaholism. Why tell this existential story through a fantastic plot?
Kristijonas Vildžiūnas: The simple answer is that it would be boring to tell a story that focuses on life as a horizontal process and on the linear development of a conflict. Everything started from a very subjective experience. During the pandemic, I was isolated and really wasn’t able to work. My film was on hold in the last stage of post-production, and suddenly there were various situations with my children and family, and I realised I was really far away from them. Where am I? Who am I? That was the initial point, and I wanted to translate that in the film.

A linear story wouldn’t have sufficed. I wanted the spectator to feel what was on the character’s mind, so I needed another dimension. I had this vision, while I was half-asleep – I already had the story of the family and the reunion, but suddenly I saw it: the elevator starts moving, the character is falling, and suddenly there is amnesia. It looks like some components are missing. The way he sees himself is not how he looks from the outside, so he has to decipher the others’ reactions.

Where does the Chinese connection and the code idea come from?
I needed to find him an occupation that was very immersive and constant, something that takes many years to do. So I thought maybe he is translating the I Ching book, which is ancient and difficult, with many layers and possible lines of interpretation. He is completely immersed in this world, and ironically he cannot see where he actually is in his real family life. He is always translating, reading everything through codes. Even in the end, when his wife says something very warm about remembering and sharing memories of the children, he answers by citing this book.

The I Ching is also very visual. It has the hexagrams, which are almost like a computer code – 64 combinations of 0 and 1. They can easily be translated into something else, like those black-and-white dice appearing in the film. And dice means game, the game of life.

There’s irony in the fact that he is decoding a distant culture while unable to understand what’s around him. Like in Tarkovsky’s Solaris – which is about craving outer space without learning how to love each other first.
True. I think the film is really about presence. When we are occupied with something, we withdraw from life and from the people closest to us, we become unable to just be there, without an agenda, without a mission.

Perhaps presence is the most difficult art to master. To be present not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

The cube has a somewhat old-school, decadent look. Why did you choose this aesthetic?
Since the lift is a reflection of his mind, I asked myself what the main visual characteristics of his memory could be. His mind is a mess, but contains everything about who he is – how he was raised, his relationship with his parents. He grew up the USSR, so the lift looks like a typical Soviet lift in an old neighbourhood in Vilnius. It is just bigger and geometrically modified, to reflect the I Ching and its symmetry.

The retro aspect also contributes to a nostalgic mood. The character realises that his children have grown up and he is melancholic about their childhood.
That is why we also transferred the digital image through 35mm film. We got the colours from Kodak, and the grain and real stock colours influence how you see the film. It is not only the props or set design, the image itself carries that feeling.

This dreamy reality seems to run through your cinema. Where did that style come from?
One of the first films I saw was Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. It was forbidden then, so I saw it at a secret screening. Tarkovsky’s films are very dreamy.

Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo also had a strong impact on me. I was fascinated by how Herzog shifts perspective, from Klaus Kinski’s character to the isolated indigenous community, and by the image of the broken ship returning to the harbour. It made me feel that subjective realities don’t necessarily share a common world.

Since then, I have used this shifting perspective in my films. In Dice-Ching-O-Mat, perspectives cross spaces and realities. Genre serves the psychological needs of the story.