Biopics can often be dull affairs and 'Walesa, Man of Hope' does not initially inspire, with its corny subtitle and hackneyed framing (the man giving an interview in which eh looks back on his life). But Lech Walesa was (and is) an genuinely interesting man who moreover was cursed to live in interesting times: a not-so-humble ordinary man who more or less appointed himself to lead a group of striking miners in Poland, a rabble-rouser yet a realist, and arguably the leading global symbol of resistance to the late-era communist dictatorships in eastern Europe. Film-make Andrzej Wadja lived through this time himself, and while his portrait of Walesa is compelling though simplistic (his strengths, it is suggested, did not lie in his subtlety of character), we also see exactly how the regime retained power. Some of my favourite moves were made by Kieslowski in the hopeless aftermath of the period of martial law imposed in the early 1980s; this film tells us more about why that martial law was imposed, and also, why the hopelessness it inspired was ultimately misplaced. The Communist officials come across as less pure evil, but as ordinary people themselves, who've talked themselves into a position where they perceive they have no choice but to run a broken and oppressive system. Walesa challenged them and ultimately was a major force for change. And Wadja's film is a convincing portrait of the man and his times.
