Popiól i diament

I've seen this movie only twice, stumbling across it the first time in a theater in Skopje, Yugoslavia, and I left the theater almost in shock. I'd never seen such a combination of direction, editing, cinematography, and acting. (That business about Cybulski being "the Polish James Dean" is disregardable nonsense; like saying that Chopin was the Polish John Phillip Souza.) Wajda's other films didn't seem so impressive, but "Ashes and Diamonds" was simply superb. The images linger in the mind, even now, when artiness has become commonplace. The shattered crucifix hanging upside down; the final chase through the drying laundry; and Cybulski on his side, kicking himself around in circles atop a heap of garbage! It wasn't simply thought provoking, it was shocking. I can only remember one other time I felt stunned into silence on leaving a theater, and that was in LA after the first Bergman film I saw, which happened to be "The Seventh Seal." Don't miss it.

"Ashes and Diamonds" (Polish, 1958): And, this is the third of Wajda's trilogy about WWII in Poland, or perhaps better stated, inside the Polish people. This one is set on the last night of the war, and the following first day of official peace & freedom from German domination. As with both of the other films, nothing is as simple as it might first appear to us, or to the story's characters. Although it might not be "necessary" to view this trilogy three nights in a row (as I did), they SHOULD be seen in sequence. The writer and director chose exceptionally interesting and symbolic moments in time to place these stages. Note: NONE are upbeat, optimistic considerations of what war creates, except perhaps Wajda's inclination that the Poles do what they MUST for the greater good, even when it is for their individual worst.

This film shows an alternative lost youth to that of 1950's America. In the late 1940's and early 1950's some of Poland's teenagers were involved in a life and death struggle against the Soviet and Communist Polish authorities. these young people had been raised in the bloodshed of WWII and had learned to fight and die.

The film shows the lost youth of Poland struggling to find a way to leave this vicious upbringing and return to a normality which they often didn't ever have.

The film's hero wants to return to being a student and having romances and friends after years of fighting for the Polish underground (this is why he wears sunglasses, because his eyesight was damaged fighting in tunnels during the Warsaw Uprising), however he has a mission to kill a communist officer...

The film is amazing, the imagery reflects the detruction and sorrow of this lost generation. The direction and acting are superb. Like a previous poster, however, I was a little dis-satisfied with the ending, which differed from the book. That is a trivial point, though.

First, I've read a book by Jerzy Andrzejewski and then I've seen the movie. After that, I never went back to the book. It was not because it was bad, quite the contrary - it was very good. But the movie by Andrzej Wajda is definitely a masterpiece of Polish movie-making. The main plot of the movie revolves around Maciek Chelmicki, a young idealist who fought against the Germans and then turned to fight against the Communists. He is sent to kill Szczuka, one of The Party's middle rank administrators, by the Polish underground.That's the plot. The movie itself is about a lot of important things, common to all people (but I believe the Polish people will find a few of them more emotionally binding):

1. Nothing is black or white, everything is just a shade of gray

2. Is death, no matter how you try to justify it, senseless?

3. Is it better to live, while on your knees or die standing straight? Or maybe it's better to try to live standing straight?

4. That sometimes it's not war that is hell, it's living through war and trying to live a normal life that is a lot harder (thank God I do not know if it is so)

Wajda's movie doesn't give direct answers to any of these questions - each person may watch the movie from a different point of view and get to a totally different conclusion. But even if you're not into psychological movies about war, or noir-movies (and Popiol i Diament is definitely a sort of a noir-movie) it's worth watching for just one scene - the burning vodka glasses at the bar - Cybulski at his best.

And lastly - the motto of the movie (and of the book as well):

"Will ash and chaos be left in the end, that follows a storm into abyss Or may a diamond be found in the ash, a dawn of an everlasting victory"

Cyprian Kamil Norwid

PS: I hope Mr Norwid will not turn in his grave at the quality of my translation but that part of a poem by CK Norwid sums up the movie really well.

This is one of those movies that convince me of the medium's universality. Wajda is using his skills in emulation of Hollywood examples (for example, the tenebrous lighting reminiscent of fashionable noir movies and the deep focus honed by Orson Welles and Gregg Toland), but his story is genuinely about post-war Poland and is intensely personal and honest. In Zbigniew Cybulski, he has an actor who catches the director's personal feelings about the War and what has happened to his homeland, his bravery struggling against the ambiguity and despair brought on by war weariness and soviet betrayal. We see the sociology of the moment, from the hotel clerk's nostalgia for Warsaw, now ruined, to the hardened barmaid, who wants desperately to believe in love. The whole spectrum is sampled, from the ineffectual old leaders to the vicious soviet man who assists the targeted Sczcuka, himself a decent but conflicted character. It's remarkable that Wajda got the film made despite his soviet minders.