Kanal

This is an excellent movie. It tells the story of the last stages of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. A small unit of Polish Resistance fighters are ordered to fall back to a central position by going through the sewers.

Most of the actions happens in the eerie confines of the sewers, which creates a very gripping atmosphere. However, the most interesting aspect of the movie is the character development. All of the characters are so different and changeable. No stereotypical characters in this movie!

Andrzej Wajda is a truly great director. He is able to make unique movies based on the character development, rather than relying on gimmicks to gain the audience's attention. In this movie you never know what is ultimately going to happen to the resistance fighters until the final scenes.

A great film, at first viewing people may not understand some of the cultural references. The tall blonde brave sewer-runner is not a model of Aryan Uber Womanhood but that of a strong polish woman.According to the official line of Nazi Propaganda the metaphor for the Aryan woman was of a breeder , home maker not a woman that would take a pro-active role in dragging aman half way across the canals of Warsaw. I saw the movie as less of a metaphor for hell as that of an actual hell,the hell of siege such as stalingrad. Stalingrad was not a metaphor for hell it was hell on earth. As was Warsaw in the last days of organized rebellion.As much as Das Boot style brought across a sliver of the real life incident , Kanal's style brings across the desperation of the struggle in Warsaw. The optomistic saddness can be written off as slavic melancholy, or better described as the hope and sorrow of a nation that has many times been routed from the map of europe only to resurface strong and proud.Everything was taken from them and hope itself is in question as the final reel fades to black.

In many respects this movie is sheer brilliance. For starters "Kanal" describes the entire Polish Revolt in a single instance at the eve of its termination. But this movie is much more than a parable of Revolution and struggle. "Kanal" has great characters, great settings, great scenes, and, above all, an important message to be told.

What would it be like to fight an impossible battle against a larger force and be in the real world? What would it be like to face death at every turn and still travel on knowing defeat awaited you at the next bend? "Kanal" is the answer to these questions.

Did Andrzej Wajda predict the modern horror film? Or was he merely acting on--and manipulating--our fear of the big, scary monster? There are many shots in KANAL where the camera will simply stay on a passageway seconds after the survivors leave the shot. As a modern audience who has lived through horror films, we expect a Nazi or a monster to slip into the frame in the background, but it never does. KANAL truly is a horror film, but what's unbearable to us and the sturdy group of Resistance fighters isn't the Nazis above the sewers or the metaphorical monster, but it is the solitude and emptiness that drives them to insanity, death or a bitter end.

KANAL is Andrzej Wajda's dirty, bloody valentine to the heroes of the 1944 Warsaw Resistance as the film follows the last hours of a band of heroes in their ultimately futile attempt to escape the Nazis through the labyrinth of underground sewers. We are first introduced to them as strong, willful humans trying to survive in a world that's falling to ruins (One could also argue that Andrzej Wajda also created the first post-apocalypse film). They laugh, they love, they play music in the last happy moments of their lives. After they enter the sewers, we expect and want them to come out even more strong-willed than ever--how many people can face dead bodies floating in the water of a dirty sewer with the same calm defiance? But as time goes on and the group gets separated, it becomes more and more inevitable that these heroes are not meant for a Hollywood's movie's happy, redemptive ending.

Andrzej Wajda, like Roman Polanski, was a real survivor of the Nazi invasion of Poland during WWII, and both became filmmakers who brought their experiences to films, as Polanski did with Oscar-winning THE PIANIST. However, Polanski's film, though absolutely profound, doesn't have Wajda's eye for details--the scenes of ruined Warsaw, for example, seem almost CGI'ed and it's obvious that he's trying to go for more, while Wajda will focus solely on the dirty ground, the debris blowing in the wind, or the flames of a burning building in the background. With Wajda, less is much more effective. If there is a situation more dirty, awful, lonely, scary or haunting than these people making their way through the labyrinths, I have yet to see it.

This is certainly NOT a feel-good film, as it deals with the horrors of the Nazis and their crushing of the Warsaw uprising of 1944. After all, there is no way or reason to make this a nice or fun movie to view. It just isn't possible. BUT, we are treated to an intensely realistic and viscerally disturbing film showing the war in all its awfulness. The first portion of the film is set in crumbling buildings and the nobility of the cause is apparent. However, the vast majority of the film is set in the sewers (hence the title "Kanal") and the characters, over time, lose some of their nobility and just ache to survive. The film is intensely claustrophobic and the filth they move about in literally looks like raw sewage--so as the characters fight for life and, in most cases, give up hope, you find yourself being pulled into their world and their terror. A great, though intensely awful film to watch. So, it comes as no surprise that I would not recommend this film to children or people afflicted with claustrophobia.

PS--if the musician seems familiar, it's because Wladyslaw Sheybal (also known as "Vladek Sheybal") is one of the Bond Villains in the movie FROM Russia WITH LOVE.