The Last Witness

The movie, though premised on the WW II backdrop, isn't a war movie. It's a movie that chronicles how arduously a journalist pursues the mysterious surfeit of suicides of ex-Polish corps. He tries to scrounge for a story, defying odds, from clandestinely poised observers to potentially malevolent institutional resistance.

The cinematography of the movie is very accurate in it's treatment of a sensitive subject, with the background score augmenting the pace of the movie, though it might raise the spectre of being a languidly paced movie, only to accentuate the realism that investigative journalism doesn't fructify as is portrayed in the stereotypical Hollywood movies. The movie is quite authentic in portrayal of the post war eras, with it's settings.

It is a poignant movie, and though movies are meant to be enjoyed, it leaves you retrospective, pondering how farcical history can be and how it is usually forged by the victors of a war, often under the garb of sustaining the feeble political entente.

I was so happy to have learned about this. I had no idea. It was a very crucial time at the end of the war but it should have never been covered up and those two men lost their lives just trying to tell the truth. It's amazing the number of lives that were lost for no really reason. Hitler and the Soviets were evil.

This is a nicely directed, historically accurate movie. The cast is overall very good, especially Robert Wieckiewicz.

The Last Witness will be appreciated by the more intelligent, thoughtful movie watchers, but probably not by those who look for excessive violence and explicit sexual scenes.

By times The Last Witness reminded me of some of Alfred Hitchcock's suspenseful films. But I was more deeply moved by this one than any of Hitchcock's fictional movies, because I knew these events really happened.

Because of the extreme importance of the matter, I am really uncomfortable to saying this movie is quite a misfire. It could have been so much better, it should have been better. Directing and editing are very confusing: you are not allowed to easily understand the settings or the whole post-war background, there's no difference between the fighting age and the reconstruction time. You can't appreciate any shades that suggeste you are in Russia, England or Poland. The whole movie seems to take place in the same few exteriors. The assembly rythm is terrible: the editing is very boring, so slow that loses all the tension and the final suspense (there's none!), some scenes unnecessary. Nor it helps in taking time to get deep in the characterization of the personages: their portraits are very flat, their evolving in the storyline and the following awareness of human monstrosity (in war and politics both) are superficial. Main character is tedious and pale, as well as being not quite an eagle... Because, maybe, the production tried to avoid volgar spectacularization of the massacres, I guess, it eventually ends up to minimize the real tragedy: the movie turns out to depersonalize victims of Katyn, merely corps, lack of scenes, lack of details... so wrong! The acting is also quite poor and Michael Gambon's performance is completely wasted in two minor scenes...somebody would ask please why in hell he accepted this part...again: bad final editing, quite sure, and not such a good screenplay. Pretty enough are the cinematography and the original soundtracks. Good basic plot, shaking movie structure and timing. In the end, all these aspects stop you to have any kind of "transfert" or to reach a deep empathy that the movie should have inspired. Its greatest fault is the lack of passion and heart: the claim and the reckoning of one of the worst slaughters in the 20th century, I feel, should have been shouted and screamed loudly like a running train to the truth, instead you hear just a whisper. You would have liked to be moved instead of simply Learning an excruciating truth....but, sometimes, could it be enough?

Being an Englishman who has been living in Poland for the last 16 years I was interested to see this joint Polish-Anglo production and it is definitely worth it for those viewers who are interested in this period of history just after the end of World War II.

The film, based on a true story, covers the British and American cover up of the Katyn massacre in 1940 by the Russian NKVD of around 22,000 Poles from the intelligentsia, military, church i.e. the country's elite. The victims were shot in the back of the head and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest, to be discovered a year later by German forces who were building a road thru the forest. In efforts to maintain the Russian commitment to defeating the Nazis, the massacre was blamed on the Germans.

Alex Pettyfer is very convincing in the role of Stephen Underwood, the young journalist who sets out to discover the mystery of why so many Polish soldiers are committing suicide in his area of Bristol. This is a mission that is of no interest to his editor (Michael Gambon) and he meets several obstacles along the way in his quest to find out the truth.

He is assisted in his quest by his lover, Jeanette Mitchell (Talulah Riley) who gives a good (but a times a little stilted ) performance and his efforts are being monitored by the British, headed by Mason Mitchell (Jeanette's homosexual husband played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes, who also puts in a convincing performance). The witness is played by the well-known actor, Robert Wieckiewicz, and his role is at the crux of the film's plot.

So, all in all a definite recommendation to see this film. Piotr Szkopiak (born to Polish parents in London - they were deported from Poland in 1939), who is both the film's director and co-writer, looks like a promising young director to watch out for.