Der Mann aus Marmor

Andrzej Wajda has always impressed me, and his war trilogy are among the best and most essential films in the history of cinema, but "Man of Marble" is an ambitious, interesting idea that isn't realized very well in script or in terms of the finished product.

The most interesting aspect of "Man of Marble" outside of the much-examined similarities to "Citizen Kane" is how subversive it is. I wonder how this was ever released in Poland at the time, and the scenes in the film where I felt Wajda really did succeed as a director is where he contrasts Soviet propaganda with the actual events- very powerful. Wajda fails more than he succeeds with this particular film though, it's a disjointed narrative and it takes tremendous skill to keep the audience interested in both stories. Sure, one may argue that "Man of Marble" isn't intended as entertainment, but even in the context of art-house cinema this film is only engaging in parts, with Agnieszka's attempt to make this film ending up far more interesting than the film she's making.

I can see where Wajda is going with the way he shot this film, but it just doesn't work very well, and the score for this film has to be one of the worst matches I've ever come across. It's ludicrous.

Something of a companion piece by the same writer and director, I found "Man of Iron" far more engaging and impressive.

5/10

"Czlowiek z marmuru" ("Man of Marble") goes to tells us the story of a filmmaker (Krystyna Janda) who wants to make as a film thesis a documentary about one of the heroes of Poland's communist regime, a simple man named Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), a bricklayer who was famous for building housing for all the people, and that made him a cult figure in his country. She is trying to find Birkut, a popular figure that vanished without any explanation and she'll try to discover what happened with this mythic figure. Interviewing those who knew him and watching old footage of him, the filmmaker will make a great work about this man but her bosses who owns the funds (the Socialist government funds) for the film's realization are not very happy with her film, thinking that this might be a damaging project for them.

If the story sounds a little like "Citizen Kane" well, be ready for countless flashbacks, back and forth in the past of Birkut, and an almost inconclusive ending just like Welles masterpiece. But wait! The ending of this journey appears in "Man of Iron" (1981), also directed by the great Andrzej Wajda.

"Man of Marble" (term that refers to the propagandistic marble statues made in Birkut's image) is a powerful and brilliant story about the importance of past in the lives of everyone, it's the thing that makes us look for the future with better eyes, and in the film, we are constantly dragged down to it in order to get some answers about Birkut's future: Is he alive? Is he dead? Why he disappeared? Not just that, it is a great accomplish in showing how documentaries are made, both the protagonist work but the ones made up by the government, where Birkut and his friends were "trained" to appear important in front of camera. And, of course, a political and historical background that reveals many things about Poland and how strict the society were back in the 1950's and even in the 1970's with an absolute control on everything filmed, said and all.

Unique in many senses, "Man of Marble" present us the sad reality of Communism with masked realities where everything presented as good but in the surface it wasn't all good, and Birkut realizes that after a painful incident and after the suspicion that his friend was a spy, something that he never agreed, and that made him fight with the ones who put him on a good position among people, the government.

It is a well made film, with terrific performances by the cast, and a magnificent screenplay that knows how to evoke many times, many periods of Poland without being confusing (something that was problematic in its sequel), everything works fine. Bravo, Mr. Wajda. 10/10

If 165 minutes seems like a long time to watch a film about a Polish bricklayer who becomes a symbol for over-achievement under the Soviet state, well, it probably is, but the film is not as dry as it might sound, and it's worth watching. Wajda adds an extra layer to the story by showing a young woman director (Krystyna Janda) using filmmaking in the 1970's as a means of uncovering the truth about what happened to this guy, and it's interesting when we see that filmmaking two decades earlier had been a means of creating his image. Just as with the communist statues and artwork from the era which show clean-cut, strong, contented workers, it was a director who came up with the idea for the bricklaying challenge in order to extol the virtues of the ideal worker under communism. Despite all this, the bricklayer (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) has an endearing innocence about him. He really wants to do a good job and to set a record, and later fights to try to find his buddy who has been imprisoned. He seems like a symbol of the Polish people of the period, and it's telling this his fate remains unknown and ambiguous for most of the film.

In poking at the so-called Stakhanovite worker, those who outperformed others but then faced resentment and backlash, Wajda deftly shows how it was all based on lies. He also shows a worker falsely imprisoned, the corruption of the state, and the soullessness of the Soviet-era construction projects ("what architecture," one muses), which is pretty impressive stuff to get produced in 1977, but then again, Wajda pushed boundaries throughout his career. I loved seeing the old archival footage of the actual construction of Nowa Huta and the anti-American propaganda, and I also loved the strength of Janda's character. She's a complete badass, striking her defiant poses in bell bottoms and set to 1970's funk/disco music. Wajda's filmmaking itself is a bit workmanlike but she helps bring it to life, and as with several of his other films, this seems essential as a document of Poland over the second half of the 20th century. I probably would have rated it higher in 1977, and even now debated a higher rating.

So many film students have wasted their time trying to study "Kane" as a character study and as a satire. But it wasn't really either of those things, but an experiment in depth for the camera and narrative structures. The frequent comparison between that film and this one makes a lot of sense superficially; the newsreel footage, the interviewees made up to look 20 years older.

But Agniezcka is making a film, rather than a piece for a newspaper: journalism vs. art, capitalism vs. socialism. Although the journalists in "Kane" said otherwise, they were never seeing "who he was" rather "what he was like" ie. his behaviour, how others perceived him etc. Here we have something broader, examining a man confronting society, confronting his friends, and confronting himself all at the same time. Newspaper journalism tells us what something is like. Good documentary strives to really define what or who something was.

This is a highly intelligent structure, moreso than his previous works and moreso even than "Kane." As a meditation on film-making, it moves gracefully from the shots captured by Agniezcka's cinematographer, and the shots of Wajda himself, forcing us to draw parallels.

It's a shame Wajda remains largely unknown. Perhaps the up-coming Criterion set of his "War Trilogy" will change that.

4 out of 5 - An excellent film

Ironic, tongue-in-cheek, smart and a tad too long, "Man of Marble" is a good movie that can't help being a little bit too much in love with itself, on top of being unable to know where to stop, thus ending being a little bit repetitive.

Agnieszka, a university student doing her diploma film, decides to investigate in the past of long forgotten hero of the people Birkut. Her search brings her to discover a lot about a man that was put in a pedestal to then be forgotten and erased from the history of the nation.

Wajda does not use a lot of subtlety in this film, but who needs it when the script is smart enough, the direction top notch, with some great shots and a pace that is sometimes close to an action movie, and there is really good acting (in particular our hero, Agnieszka, played with a lot of sass and confidence by Krystyna Janda). The score and the use of locations is also great.

However, the movie clocks at over two hours and a half, and the ideas behind the movie: the use of unknown people by the ones in power as little more than toys, destroying lives and dreams without a second of remorse, the difficulty to fight the system or the way paranoia extends everywhere in some regimes become undone by repetition and by a story that starts to spin on its wheels around the 1 hour and a half mark.

It is totally worth checking though. Just be sure to have enough time (you may want to have some breaks).