HYPOTHESIS
This title should be understood literally.
There was no professor.
This situation didn't happen.
But let's assume that...
There is an old, university town.
In Austria, Hungary, Poland or in Germany.
Anyway, somewhere in Central Europe.
Details don't matter.
We can just imagine any other country as well.
The essential element of the story is the old university.
And a wide river with a high bridge.
Just like this one.
This film was made in Torun.
Let's also assume, that it's 1913.
Why? In order to feel some distance.
Only a few of us remember those times, so we can make up things quite freely.
Many things could have happened then.
It's 1913.
In Europe - the time of empires and kingdoms, our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
Full of opposites, waves of strikes
injustice and harsh social conflicts.
It's autumn in our town.
Let's say it was beautiful.
Who would feel like checking in old yearbooks if it's true?
Anyway, contemporary journals didn't use to write about the wheather.
They used to print worrying information about the situation in the world.
But since the place was so peaceful, nobody cared.
The university was a peaceful place too - not like it's nowadays.
Students and police officers had at least normal relations.
Now let's assume that there is a young professor N.
His existence is hypothetical, it cannot be proved.
One morning after a lecture, professor N. went for a walk.
Seemingly, this trivial incident is not important for mankind.
However, let's assume that N. is a genius.
He has been very talented since he was a child.
When he was eight, he used to win in chess with his father.
Being in secondary school, he easily solved difficult tasks.
When he was 21, his extraordinary talent for mathematics let him get PhD degree
with perspective of professional degree.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present my hypothesis to you.
And then let me prove it.
Let's assume that...
We won't follow the lecture. The thing is not about mathematics.
This hypothesis may be a usual scholarly puzzle.
But it may also be the beginning of a revolutionary theory.
Let's assume that after the lecture
professor went for a walk.
It was autumn, birds were singing.
Sun was colouring first yellowed leaves in vivid shades.
There were neither children nor sun on professor's mind.
But rather the foundations of a great discovery
that could make him as important as the great luminaries.
But before it happens, if it's going to happen at all,
professor will continue his walk.
And now a choice appears.
He may head for the bridge or go back to the downtown.
His entire life may depend on this seemingly trivial decision.
Maybe even the course of history.
Meanwhile
In the same town an accident may take place.
Let's assume that there is a young woman.
Maybe a student, madly and unrequitedly in love with the professor.
Maybe a desperate victim of exploitation,
thrown onto the street with an illegitimate child and left with nothing to live on.
Maybe a naughty patient from a mental hospital.
Or maybe it's just a careless young lady who adores art.
It doesn't matter who she is, if she wanted to kill herself
or it was just an accident.
What could have one human life meant
in times when whole nations were preparing for a mass suicide?
It is essential for our hypothesis that the professor took a walk on the bridge.
And that like in Albert Camus' novel,
in the river's current there was a woman who couldn't swim.
Let's assume that professor could swim.
Help!
If the professor had gone to his walk a few minutes later
probably he would have remained an unblemished man for many years.
But he's no longer unblemished.
He's guilty.
And then a decisive part of his discovery arose in his mind.
It wasn't a coincidence.
Remorse is often a driving force behind the great rushes of the mind.
Just one small step was needed to finish the proof.
Contrary to the professor, nothing has changed in the coachman's life.
Despite him having a runny nose.
But we can be sure that his life won't change the history of mankind.
We can assume that one of these sheets
comprises an idea which is a step in the development of mankind.
Maybe this one?
Maybe thanks to this equation
splitting the atom will be done many years earlier?
Or people will manage to explore the space.
Let's think
what can happen to the professor now.
Maybe he'll try to appease his conscience.
Or maybe while plunging into decadence
which according to Dostoevsky is one of the ways of purification,
he eventually will discover the theorem and the world will praise him.
The professor won't turn back.
Let's examine another possibility - that of atonement.
Despite no-one drowning in the river at the moment,
he has to prove that he can live up to his own expectations.
We have to take into account a possibility that it could cost him his life.
Will mankind wait for a theorem which maybe no-one will ever discover?
Maybe science will concentrate on other concepts.
No, this perspective is too sad.
So the problem of conscience has been solved, professor got rid of remorse.
Only the fisherman suffered again, but that's the lot of the poor.
Certainly he won't discover the theorem today.
Neither tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow. Maybe never.
For the time being people won't fly to the moon or split the atom.
But soon, in a couple of months
A great storm will raze 3 empires to the ground, killing many millions of people.
Somewhere in the world a man who could change the course of history
could be buried like this.
No-one would write on his grave "here lies a man with a clean conscience".
No-one would even know about it.
So it's better that this story has never taken place.
STARRING