Powstanie Warszawskie

This film just blows my mind. Old original documentary tapes are converted in a movie and the result is just marvelous! The film keeps you interested, and frequently you forget that there are real people you are watching. I have never seen such a thing before!

The Warsaw Uprising is a very tragic moment in Polish history. Irrational from the strategic point of view and Poles have paid the highest price for it. No other nation was prepared to destroy their capital together with the most precious generation of young people with it. When you look at the numbers you will find that 200.000 Poles were killed and less than 10.000 Germans in the uprising. This gives that there were more than 20 Poles killed for a single German! Watching this movie can give a bit of answer why this heroic movement was possible.

I love Poland, I love Warsaw, and I try to watch almost every Warsaw Uprising movie that I come across. I watched all old Polish movies and read several books, and when I learned about this 2014 production, I was thrilled and amazed. Wow - a whole documentary movie made of old footage right from the heart of the Uprising. Sounded lime a very captivating and marvelous prospective. It did. But the very first movie frames dispelled that myth almost entirely - the disclaimer says there are certain modern staged scenes. Okay. Let it be so. Then, a second setback - coloration. It can be both blessing and curse. Here, coloration seems to be a mixed bag - often it served the cause well, emphasizing the colorful reality of war- time everyday-ness. Often, this modern coloration spoiled the whole set, making the reality too sickly bright and weird. Another huge mistake was that behind the camera chat, which often bothered, angered, diverted, drove mad and simply was out of place almost 99% of the time. Pity, thus a very promising and mesmerizing idea became a sour, bland, vapid and rather unsteady mishmash of good and bad, awesome and terrible. Pity but bad over-weighed and made this cool movie just plain pathetic and not so cool as it could have been. Watch it once ad dismiss as pretty forgettable attempt.