KATYN (Poland, 2007)Wednesday, 10th February 2010When Andrzej Wajda made his first feature film, A Generation, in 1954 a supporting role in it was taken by a young Polish actor who would go on to become a world-famous director. Because he chose to work largely in English language movies, Roman Polanski has become the most well-known Polish film-maker as far as the general public are concerned, but it is Wajda, born in 1926, who is generally regarded as Poland’s greatest director, a major figure in European cinema. That seems to me to be a just assessment, and it should be linked to a feature of his career that makes him unique: no other film-maker has explored so tellingly and so fully on film the history of the times through which he has lived. Wajda’s most important films are as indispensible to historians studying Poland in the twentieth century as they are to those with an interest in Polish cinema.
Wajda made his name with his first there features, the trilogy consisting of A Generation, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds which portrayed the tragic but heroic history of Poland during the Second World war (Wajda, the son of a cavalry officer, had himself become a resistance fighter at the age of sixteen). Less famous yet highly distinguished films such as Lotna (1959) and Landscape After Battle (1970) were again reflections on Poland’s history in time of war. Then, braving the wrath of the authorities, Wajda came right up to date in Man of Marble (1977) and Man of Iron (1981) portraying the contemporary situation in a Poland that was oppressed and showing something of the Solidarity Movement. Forced out by the government in consequence, he went to France and there filmed Danton (1982) which in historical guise made a further comment on the situation in his own country. He was able to return in 1989 but Korczak (1990), although again touching on Polish history, was not one of his better films. Between then and 2002 six other films followed, but none of them has been seen here and although one, The Holy Week (1995), won a Silver Bear award at Berlin, it seemed probable that Wajda was one of those film-makers whose later work showed a falling off. Now, however, we have Katyń an award-winning film which is, I believe, as fine as anything he has ever done. It is certainly an extraordinary achievement for someone in his eighties.
Katyń is a film that now joins the other Wajda classics dealing with Poland in the 20th century. It is concerned with a war crime that occurred in 1940 in the forest of Katyń where Polish army officers were murdered, but it was not subject-matter that could be broached until 1989 when Poland regained its freedom. This was because the Soviets during their time controlling post-war Poland were determined to hide the truth about the massacre. Their aim was to conceal the fact that the Russian secret police had been responsible for it following the Red Army’s crossing of the border into Poland on 17th September 1939. It was during the war years that the bodies of victims were exhumed but when that happened in 1943 the Germans had simply announced the names of those who had been identified. In this way they confirmed the fate of many who had been taken and then not heard from. However, it also meant that when a name was not forthcoming, the family concerned – mothers, wives, children – would hope against hope that their missing loved one had survived. In some cases – but not all – confirmation of what had happened came to hand after the war ended, but by then the distortion of the truth had taken on another shape. The Russian occupiers fully acknowledged the tragedy but claimed that it had been perpetrated by the Germans. In support of this lie, they falsified history by declaring that the massacre had taken place not in 1940 but in 1943. That was the lie that could not be challenged while they remained in charge.
This was history that had the greatest possible significance for Wajda. His own father Jakob was one of the victims, but, although ‘Wajda’ was on the list of those who had died, the first name was given as ‘Karol’ and not ‘Jakob’. Because of that his mother was able to believe for most of her life that her husband would one day return. If it took Wajda so long after 1989 to deal with this subject on film, it was partly because of the difficulties in deciding how to handle it –and, indeed, in what to handle. He could have made a film about the crime itself or he could have concentrated on the lies about it. In the end, he decided to cover both and set about making a film that reflected both his own family history and the wider tragedy through a screenplay that involved others but also contained his own personal contribution.
The resultant film is, I believe, a great one, albeit occasionally demanding when it comes to following a large cast of characters. I will, therefore, conclude this note by clarifying the figures involved. We start with Ann or Anna who is the wife of a captain, Andrzej. The latter is taken into captivity as is Anna’s father-in-law, a professor at Krakow University. Anna and her young daughter Nika join Andrzej’s mother (a role played by the veteran actress Maja Komorowska) in waiting for news of Andrzej. It’s long in coming but eventually does so through the return of Jerzy, a lieutenant who had been a friend and fellow prisoner of Andrzej. Running in parallel with this is the story of a general’s wife, another woman waiting for news of her husband while bringing up their daughter Ewa.
In the first half of the film, these two plot-lines dominate with other elements proving incidental – one such being the help unexpectedly offered to Anna by a sympathetic Russian officer who has lost his own family. In the second half two more plot-lines are added, new but not unrelated. One concerns the two sisters of another prisoner seen early on in the film, the engineer Lieutenant Pilot. One sister, Irena, wants to play for safety by not stirring things up, but the other, Agnieszka, is determined to challenge the authorities and their falsification of the circumstances in which her brother died. The link between this sub-plot and the main thrust of the film is self-evident. The other new plot-line serves to show how the younger generation could be caught up through the refusal of the authorities to tell the truth. This uses one character we know already, the General’s daughter Ewa, and a new character, Tadeusz, Anna’s young cousin, who refuses to falsify his C.V. regarding the details of the death of his father, another Katyń victim.
All of these aspects are relevant to the real history that is the basis of this film but, having investigated the subsequent post-war events in this way, Wajda concludes by going to the heart of the matter as the narrative returns to 1940 and, making superb use of music by Krzysztof Penderecki, he rounds off this superb work in a manner that can only be described as heart-stopping. Katyń is a work of art that may well be Wajda’s finest film and, as such, it treats this overwhelming incident in Poland’s history in a way fully worthy of it. I doubt whether anybody else could have done it.
Programme Note by Mansel Stimpson.
