ScreenWize

For poor old Poland during World War Two and in its aftermath, it was a case of the devil or the deep blue sea. Their homeland was the battlefield on which the Nazis pushed from one side and the Soviets from the other, and in Katyn, acclaimed Polish director Andrej Wajda continues his career-long exploration on the war and its aftermath with the story of a particularly dark place in Polish history. In 1940, the beautiful Katyn forest outside of Smolensk in Russia became home to a massacre of upwards of 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals, imprisoned between the annexing of Poland by Germany and the resulting Soviet invasion, and killed by the Soviets under the direct orders of Stalin. The Soviets officially denied their involvement, blaming Germany and making life most unpleasant for any citizen who dared to suggest otherwise, and only admitting culpability as late as 1990.

Wadja’s film focuses on three families affected by the massacre. Young officer Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski) refuses to escape with wife Anna (Maja Ostaszewska) when he has the chance, choosing to honour his military oath and follow his fellow officers to a military camp. Back home in Krakow, Andrej’s father is imprisoned for being a lecturer at the local University, which the Nazi’s see as the hotbed of anti-government unrest. Meanwhile, Róza, (Danuta Stenka), wife of Andrej’s General (Jan Englert) is pressured by the Nazis to assist in anti-Soviet propaganda. This is a those-left-behind story, and the women’s performances are all well drawn and performed, especially Maja Ostaszewska’s loyal and hopeful young wife.

The lush cinematography of Pawel Edelman almost makes up for the serious problems with the screenplay, which jumps confusingly forward in time so that a knowledge of history is essential to understand what is happening to the characters. The film is a courageous homage to the Polish heroes, among whose numbers included Wadja’s own father, and yet despite the closeness of its subject, Wajda chooses to tell his tale almost completely devoid of emotion. The loss of loved ones, waiting to see their names among lists of the dead, and even later scenes revealing their gruesome demise, are strangely clinical and impersonal, though it does work in building a sense of the suffocating regimes under which his characters must live.

CK
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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon