Resident Evil: The Morawski Mirror

In the wake of the trial of Adolph Eichmann for WWII war crimes, Stanley Milgram would incept the idea for perhaps the single most famous psychology study to date. Milgram’s experiment involved having participants administer increasingly painful shocks to another person, who, unbeknownst to the participant, was truly a confederate pretending to be injured. Milgram uncovered an appalling finding: under the order of an experimenter, 65% of participants would deliver possibly fatal shocks even after hearing the ‘victim’ pleading for mercy. Given the still-fresh memory of the Holocaust, societies across the world were shocked at the implication that ordinary, seemingly good people were capable of such immoral actions. If the Milgram study holds a place among the most influential academic inquiries, I contend that it necessarily follows that Ryszard Bugajski’s Interrogation must similarly be recognized in the world of cinema. Although the movie has many remarkable characteristics, it is the incredibly nuanced depiction of Communist Lieutenant Morawski’s struggle to retain his morality amidst the depravity of his role as an interrogator that makes Interrogation a must-see film. It brings to life the findings of Milgram’s experiment, forcing viewers to question their own capacities for evil.

The progression of events throughout the film is carefully crafted to achieve this effect. Bugajski makes the very purposeful decision of introducing the sadistic Major Zawada as the first interrogator. Zawada is the living embodiment of the heinous system of extrajudicial torture during high Stalinism. He never shows any hesitation when humiliating or tormenting Tonia. Viewers, as I did, will make the easy, implicit association between individual and institution. Given the profoundly evil nature of the secret police and the practice of Stalinist-era political imprisonment, it must be true that everyone that supports this system is also evil. This belief is confirmed initially when we meet Morawski, as he relays to Tonia his desire to shoot her. Yet as the movie advances, seeds of doubt begin to grow and encroach upon these steadfast convictions. None of the other officials nor guards express regret for their actions at any point, but there are multiple occasions of Morawski demonstrating his immense discomfort and even outrage toward the behavior of his colleagues. To stop Zawada from continuing to hose down Tonia, Morawski lies to Zawada and nurses Tonia back to health. Especially after learning about his experiences in Auschwitz, the audience is reeled back in to take a closer look at his character and understand the intense cognitive dissonance that he feels. The horrors of his past combined with his hopeful idealism to support the creation of a better future humanize Morawski. In Milgram’s study, two crucial reasons cited for the participants’ actions were that many of them believed that 1) the experimenters knew better than them and 2) they were furthering the greater good by advancing scientific knowledge. Morawski helps us actually understand these mechanisms for obedience, as we see this conflicted man torture himself, constantly seeking to suppress his own feelings — whether that be his love for Tonia or shame as an interrogator — to support a larger cause.

The culmination of Morawski’s story is his suicide; he has reached the point at which his guilt has become too much to bear. The genius of the Morawski storyline is that it mirrors that of Tonia in many ways. Though Tonia is physically imprisoned, we also witness the allegorical imprisonment of Morawski, who is held prisoner to his faith in a corrupt system. We see firsthand the stripping of Morawski’s autonomy, his agency, his individuality. Upon completing the film, it becomes impossible to not question our naïveté when considering issues of good versus evil, which many of us consciously or subconsciously think of as a strict binary. Ultimately, Interrogation reveals deep-seated truths about the human experience, perhaps allowing us to see a little bit of ourselves in the Lieutenant who met his untimely demise.