Katyn

KATYN is one of the most powerful World War II films I have ever seen and from the first frame of Poles fleeing from the Germans to the rear and the Russians in the front, an audience immediately feels the horror and claustrophobia of attempting to flee from the enemy, but with a sense of absolutely no where to run. The cast is simply superb, the story one of Polish Officers who meet their fate at the hands of the enemy, but with a sense of pride in themselves and their families, and the men and women who struggled to deal with both the Germans and the Russians and survive, is one written in the annals of history, but now with the truth of the slaughter finally brought to light. The final scenes in KATYN sent me from the theater with a sense of wanting to get a deep breath of air in my lungs, and to attempt to digest the horror I had just seen on the screen. KATYN deserves the Oscar and it is a film that will haunt you forever.

FILE THIS ONE UNDER.... "TRUTH IS OFTEN STRANGER THEN FICTION"!

BUT BEFORE DIVING IN: Let us FOCUS on the Title's Content & Context!

KATYN makes it painfully clear that the truth was a very scarce commodity throughout decades of Soviet domination.

Considering Katyn was released nearly 20 years after the end of the Communist/Soviet era in Poland. It seems, to me at least, somewhat baffling that it took Polish film-makers so long to share these tragic and poignant true events with the world. In historical retrospect, Nazi atrocities perpetrated against Poland and its people have been well circulated and repeated tirelessly over past decades.

On the other hand, there has been a virtual dearth of information regarding Soviet atrocities. "WWII was triggered by the German blitzkrieg invasion of Poland in September, 1939." is what we Americans have been told ad nauseam for decades. What is rarely ever mentioned is the simultaneous eastern invasion of Poland by Soviet forces! While Nazi aberrations such as Auschwitz and the Warsaw ghetto have been chronicled in numerous well-known films, this marks the first time, in my recollection at least, that Soviet war crimes have been dealt with openly and clearly in a movie.

KATYN relates this true war time story through the interwoven lives of a dozen or so family members and friends. Within minutes of viewing, I was totally gripped by the story, and even though the eventual outcome is a historical fact we are all keenly aware of, the story unfolded in such a way as to never lose my interest.

ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

A well done picture speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves and would be gladly considered never existing by some.

Although it's difficult to credibly and adequately convey the horror of such a murder which became a life tragedy for many Polish families and undoubtedly affected the way Poland looked after the war I think the director made a good job. Especially so, that it happened to be his personal tragedy as well.

Despite that the movie is well-balanced with emotions and atmosphere. Modest colors and anxious music by Penderecki emphasize the horror of those who were waiting. Short cuts of brutal scenes of murder leave speechless. No additional comment is needed.

I watched "Katyn" on a home computer screen. Even in that limited format, "Katyn" had an impact on me comparable to such cinematic greats as "Lawrence of Arabia." I cried throughout most of the film. I resolved that many of my relationships would be different. I remembered people I had known who reminded me of characters in the movie. After the film ended, I felt that I could not listen to the radio or read the newspaper or listen to anyone speak. I just needed to allow the film to sink into me.

Naysayers have critiqued "Katyn" as boring and dull. If you need a film to depict war, occupation, and atrocity as shiny, compact, and compelling as a sports car, then you should listen to those naysayers; don't watch "Katyn," rather, watch the very silly, teen fanboy-friendly Quentin Tarantino flic, "Inglorious Bastards." If you've seen enough Hollywood productions jam-packed with sexy Nazis and happy endings, and you want to take in a film that dares to depict, in eyeblinks, what war, atrocity, and occupation looked like and felt like to real people, then by all means see "Katyn." One of the many features that I admired: "Katyn"'s Nazis are not sexy. They are not Tom Cruise, Liam Neeson, Christoph Waltz. "Katyn"'s Nazis are brutal, repugnant thugs.

I respect this movie. There are too few movies about which I'd say that. It shows the courage not to attempt to weave an uplifting, feel-good atrocity narrative that leaves the viewer with a smile. This isn't "Schindler's List." "Schindler's List" is a very good movie, but this isn't that. It is, rather, very much like what World War Two and the subsequent Soviet occupation sounded like to me when I listened to my own older friends and relatives, who lived through both. This is disjointed narrative, stories that seem headed for redemption or even ecstasy but that end in random death, that end in aborted normalcy, aborted joy, aborted meaning. I felt, in watching these cold, pale, stoic characters, as if I were, once again, sitting across the table from older Eastern European friends and relatives. Yes, that's what they looked like. Yes, those are the facial expressions they assumed when they talked about the uncle who was rounded up and never heard from again, the daring, handsome lad who ended up in a mass grave – or when they pointedly did *not* talk about these people. The gravestone whose inscription dares to tell the truth; the tearing down of a propaganda poster; the Red Army soldier who struggles to do the right thing by a widow, who won't yet admit that she is a widow; the singing of exactly the right Christmas carol at exactly the right moment: those are exactly the heroic gestures that no one ever saw, that went unrecorded, that only one person lived to tell about, to tell me. Here they are, on screen.

When a movie is named "Katyn" the viewer knows how it will end; it's kind of like a movie named "Auschwitz" or "Kolyma" or "Wounded Knee." There isn't going to be a surprise ending. I was still surprised by the ending, by how courageous and moving I found it. Once again, Andrzej Wajda managed to wow the film-goer in me. And he managed to move the human in me.

See "Katyn." See a movie you can respect, a movie that is worth your time.

Katyn by Andrzej Wajda

A courageous film by a director who makes no concessions. Austerity instead of high-tech. What cineast of hallucinatory action, of nude and crude sensuality, of sequences full of monumental catastrophes would make a film in which one had scenes in a slower rhythm, without sex, with shadowy photography, with quiet music and giving ethical principles priority over the characters and their lives.

One more reason, however, for us to thank Hollywood for nominating this film to run for the Oscar for the best foreign film.

The Katyn massacre, perpetrated on Stalin's orders to eliminate the fine flower of the Polish intelligentsia, was left out of official Soviet history until the glasnost of Gorbatchov. There, in the Katyn forest and in other places as well, thousands of Polish officers were massacred. The Soviets tried to attribute it to the Nazis, but the truth eventually came to light. There is still, however, in Russia today, an attempt to deny the historical truth.

I would like to make my own the reading of the film which focuses on this question of the distortion of historical fact by the apparatus of the state. The official lie imposed by the Soviet occupation of Poland brought torment to the lives of many of the families of the victims. Wajda's denunciation, along with the cry "Never kill again!" can also serve as an alert for our present world, in which so often a virtual reality becomes a substitute for the truth.

The first group of interpretations belong to the women (wives, mothers, daughters) of the dead officers: how they coped, first with the hope of their return, and then with the definitive notice of their loss. They are marvellous interpretations, revealing the director's mastery and the talent of the actors. The portrayals demonstrate how, even when nothing else is left, there is still dignity. The wife of the dead General in Katyn refuses to endorse a declaration, prepared by the Nazis, denouncing the Soviets. The truth was known – why, then, should she play Hitler's propaganda game? He was just as much the enemy as Stalin was. Another woman wants to honour the memory of her brother by putting on the family tomb a stone with his name on it. Courageously she challenges the regime, but in vain - the stone is destroyed because on it the date of the officer's death indicates clearly who is to blame.

Most of the male characters were simply victims of massacre; among those who had the opportunity of showing themselves authentically noble was a Russian officer who tried to save his Polish neighbour and her daughter. "I couldn't save my own family but I can help yours." And it is a Polish officer who has changed sides who represents, in the middle of so much heroism, the weakness of some. "It is necessary to survive," he declared.

An entire population was suffocated by the Nazi and Soviet occupation. It is a shock to be shown in the film the cordial relations between the officials of the occupying powers, which would have been inconceivable in earlier years. Poland is partitioned (yet again!) by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. In the Poland occupied by the Nazis all the professors of a university are summoned and arrested there and then (as a means of impeding the formation of future opposition). In the Poland occupied by the Soviets, the Polish officers are made prisoners of war (an efficient means of stopping them fighting for the independence of their country).

Pawel Edelman's photography is simply a work of genius, a mixture of sombre realism and the surreal. The music of Krzystof Penderecki fits the narrative like a glove, producing just the right atmosphere at the right time. The dry narrative style has something in common with a documentary and calls to mind another of his films, Love in Germany. And there is no lack of the symbolism present in all his films, this time with a remarkably religious tone.

In the development of the story there are moments taken from the films of that period – as, for example, the powerful exhumation of the dead, scenes which served Soviets and Nazis alike in placing the blame on each other.

For me the strongest images are those of the young man who refused to declare that his father had not been killed in Katyn by the Soviets; of the two waves of fugitives running in opposite directions and meeting in the middle of a bridge – which way to run? of the general who tried to animate his men in the last Christmas of their lives and of the little girl awaiting the return of her father. This last touched me in a special way, because I too had waited for my father's return at the end of the war.

Katyn is, without doubt, one of Andrzej Wajda's greatest films.

Tomasz Lychowski Rio de Janeiro, Brazil February, 2008.

Translated into English by Graham Connell