La Bataille de Westerplatte

The topic fascinated me, and seeing Polish soldiers in action is such a rare treat that I just had to buy this film. Unfortunately, many important action scenes happen off-screen, and we are just told about them later.

It almost seems as though the director was embarrassed to make a "simple" action movie, and so felt compelled to engage in psycho-drama to fill out the tale. I liked most of the actors, though, as an American, I was unfamiliar with them. I liked the sets, weapons, uniforms, and so forth.

Overall a disappointment, but a nice try.

"If we go to war no one will back us up." September 1st, 1939, the Polish city of Gdansk is an important port city that the German's are looking to take control of. Trying not to scare the entire country the army decides to send a small group of 600 soldiers against the Germans with only one goal, hold out for at least 12 hours. When it becomes clear that no support is coming for them and with dwindling supplies and medical aid they have to decide to fight till the last man falls or surrender. This is a true story of the first battle of WWII. This is not a terrible war movie at all and is worth seeing but it is pretty slow moving and the war scenes leave something to be desired. The movie is interesting though and really makes you understand what the Polls went through in the beginning of Hitler's advance but it is just a little too slow in some parts to stay fully focused on. Overall, a true war movie that is worth watching but don't expect wall to wall excitement. I give it a B-.

I read reviews and was somewhat apprehensive but I liked the movie. It shows different attitudes of men in extreme situations. I could be deemed corny but the life often is. And do not expect constant fire and gore.

Imagine the King Leonidas meme screaming in your face:

WAR!

IS!

NUANCED!!@!!!!

Followed by subtlety & believability getting kicked screaming into a bottomless pit in glorious slow-mo.

This film is supposedly tackling a sacred cow of Polish war history (and national mythology), namely the heroic defense of Westerplatte against all odds. In doing so, it asks us to scratch beneath the surface of the heroic warrior narrative and see the reality of that event, in all its complexity and nuance and human frailty, warts and all. Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to appreciate this nuance when the film spends two hours beating our skulls with a sledgehammer and screaming in our faces about how complex and subtle the real situation was.

The characters seem to have two emotional settings: zero and ten; catatonic and hysterical, stoic and screaming. This is not subtlety or nuance. It's binary, and it rings false. The performances are soap opera melodramatic, with lots of Drama School overacting. The old 1967 version is so much better in every respect.

How can the Number 1 & 2 ranking officers spend several days issuing contradictory orders and directly undermining each other without the entire thing falling to pieces? That's absurd. Either the commanding officer would lock up the second-in-command for direct insubordination (and perhaps treason) and get on with business, or that guy would go through whatever military procedure is available to relieve his commander of duty, and then take corrective steps to right the sinking ship. You can't spend several days in the middle of combat with the top dog issuing orders and his underling simply saying "no" again and again. This is absurd.

I understand this movie was intended to start a conversation about the Westerplatte Polish national myth. Unfortunately, it fails on three fronts:

(1) It doesn't ask questions, it shoves the answer down our throats with heavy-handed character portrayals. (2) It operates on the basis of deep despair of the soldiers and mental breakdown, but it does not support it with battle scenes. (3) It engages in opaque, meandering plot twists and difficult to follow timeline changes.

Those three aspects combined make the movie seem contrived and hard to understand to outsiders.