Andrzej Wajda is a landmark figure in both Polish cinema, as well as the Solidarity movement. His films, KANAL, telling of the Warsaw uprisings, and ASHES AND DIAMONDS, chronicling the Polish Resistance, are considered masterpieces. Now at 82 he comes to tell another Polish historical story that for many years would have had him imprisoned or worse. In 1940, KGB officers executed more than 15,000 Polish officers and bulldozed over their bodies in the Katyn Forest. Wajda's father Jakub was an officer killed that day.
The film poignantly begins with two fleeing groups of Polish people passing each other on a bridge. One group is fleeing from the Nazis and the others are fleeing from the Russians. A fitting metaphor for Polish history during and after WWII. Anna (Maja Ostaszewska, THE PIANIST), along with her young daughter Nika (Wiktoria Gasiewska), is looking for her husband Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski), who has been taken prisoner by the Russians. Because of loose watch of the officers, she pleads with him to escape with her, saying he made an oath to her. He replies that he made an oath to the military too. Andrzej is taken to a war camp where he begins a diary and then the massacre and then silence.
Anna desperately tries to discover what happened to her husband, but the Nazis aren't interested in victims only how they can use the murders as propaganda. As the rest of the story unfolds, we watch how various Polish citizens' lives are transformed by the events at Katyn. Roza (Danuta Stenka) is the wife of a general who was killed. The Nazis want her to help their cause, but she refuses. They threaten to take her daughter Ewa (Agnieszka Kawiorska) away from her. For years, Anna is plagued with uncertainty about her husband and harassed by military forces.
After the war, Jerzy (Andrzej Chyra), an officer taken with Andrzej who survives the killings, must live with the aftermath under Russian control. While all the Polish citizens knew what happened, the Russians rewrote history and put the blame for the murders on the Nazis. It was illegal to speak otherwise in public. Anna's nephew Tadeusz (Antoni Pawlicki) and two sisters of a murdered officer, Agnieszka (Magdalena Cielecka) and Irena (Agnieszka Glinska), find their own ways to rebel against the Russian lies.
While the emotional drive loses some of its strength toward the end when the story jumps to new characters, the film keeps use centered on the experiences of Anna. The narrative takes a unique look at war from the perspective of the wives of soldiers and other survivors. Anna knows her husband was at Katyn, but when his name is not among the list of the dead she holds out hope for his return. Even when Andrzej's own mother (Maja Komorowska) doubts if her son is still alive, Anna vehemently stands to her beliefs. It's the personal touch that makes the film so heartbreaking.
But Wajda isn't content with this one story, so he tells how the cruel facts of the time period affected others. He presents these subplots in a hyperlink narrative fashion. Different characters connect to other characters in different ways. It breathes humanity into the details he wants to address.
This film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Oscars. It was a fitting tribute to Wajda's long career to accompany his Honorary Award from 2000. This personal tale feels like it's from a filmmaker half his age. It has maturity in its direction, but vitality in is narrative and emotion. It never ceases to amaze me the depth of new stories that can be told about WWII. Soon the generation that experienced it first hand will be gone, but through films like this one their voices will not be forgotten.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
