Reviewer Ed Farolan

Over a long and distinguished career, directing more than 50 films in about half a century, Andrej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds; Man of Iron; Danton, The Conductor, The Possessed, etc.) has established an international reputation for his films about Poland and its resistance to foreign powers.

This particular film has traces of his 1958 Ashes and Diamonds, about resistance fighters continuing the struggle after World War II when Poland became communist. It focuses on a most painful episode in modern Polish history: the massacre of more than 20,000 men at the hands of the Soviet army in the spring of 1940 in Katyn (Belarus).

What impressed me about this movie was its cinematography. The camera shots were so effective. Although there were moments when a close-up would take too long, as in the scene when Anna (Stanislawa Celinska) asks an old man where her husband was, the camera took too long focusing on her face before the old man replied. But other than that, all the other shots were well-executed, and you could hear a pin drop in the theatre as the audience was totally engrossed in the film.

The ending of the film is a tragic one, and those with weak stomachs shouldn't dare see this film. It was quite brutal.

This film interested me because I was a Visiting Professor a few years ago at a university northeast of the Czech Republic, close to the Polish border, around an hour from Auschwitz and Krakow. And memories came back to me of the tragedies of war, and also the misfortunes of countries like Poland and the Czech Republic who were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, as it were, i.e., between Germany in World War II and the USSR in the postwar era. The Czechs and Poles had told me horrid stories of both these regimes that ruled over them for decades, especially the Soviets.

This is an excellent film and I highly recommend it. I've admired Wajda as a filmmaker, and have reviewed some of his films in the past.

. © 2009 Ed Farolan