L'uomo di ferro

Typing in a correctly spelt 'Man of Iron' into a DVD search-engine and immediately every conceivable configuration of Robert Downing Jnr's "Iron Man" comes up ....presuming that we are both illiterate morons AND couldn't possibly want a 1981 film about Poland - made in Poland.

Even the most news-shy hermit could fail to have heard something about Solidarity, Gdansk and Lech Walesa's rallying, admittedly 30 years ago but now is a time to reflect, with the dust settled.

Like many, I was already familiar with Poland's most well-known (at least in the "west") director Krzysztof Kieslowski but Andrzej Wajda was a name I'd heard but not seen his work. I'm always keen to see movies, especially long ones made about social issues by a native of that country and reviews were all favourable. Buying this Mr Bongo DVD, I was not disappointed.

Some other reviewers have gone into detail about the political ins & outs but it was the film itself I primarily wanted to see and I want to immediately commend both the casting and performance of Marian Opania, as Winkiel, who excellently conveys a very believable TV journalist whose lifestyle may be typical of the profession. We witness and share his hopes and anxieties, from squeezing out the cloth he used to mop up the vodka from the bottle he'd just broken into a toothbrush cup, his other mental and physical angsts and the very real situations of power- cuts and strikes that affect everything, such as the phones.

As Winkiel gets down to the task of reporting on the uprising from the inside, especially of the charismatic leader of the striking shipbuilders, Maciek Tomczyk, whose father was killed in the riots of 1970 and whose wife was detained. As the journalist interviews those around and who know Tomczyk scenes are recreated, including the occasional use of actual news footage which illustrate the various strands leading up to the strike.

Obviously, a lot more than this goes into a riveting two and a half hour film but hopefully, with your appetite whetted, you'll now want to try it yourself. There's a whole canvas here on which Poland is painted and it's an absolutely fascinating one, but still well enough made to be both informative and entertaining.

Highly recommended for those who, like me, want to expand their World Cinema repertoire beyond the easily available/popular but still want to play safe as this is a universal film that just happens to made in the Polish language. If the subject matter is of particular interest too, well, you know it's one for your online shopping cart!

Poland's historical and turbulent political moment is captured in a part documentary and part fiction film directed by Andrzej Wajda in "Man of Iron", a sequel of "Man of Marble" another classic directed by him. The film is very similar to its predecessor, which is a very good film and that's why to some it might seen a repetitive thing, except that this one took a more political approach to the story, seemed more real the situations presented. It is inferior than the previous film but it is very good too.

Here, a reporter has the assignment to cover shipyard strikers led by Maciej Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) and members of the Solidarity Union that are fighting for better work conditions and against the abuses of political authorities. The reporter is told by his bosses to make the news about this man and other people will take his notes and all to make something against the leader, something to make him look bad, but while covering the protests, and finding more and more information about Maciej's past, the reporter gets divided by the whole situation without knowing in which side to stay: with his controlling bosses that work for the government or with the strikers.

Wajda uses the same technique to present the story by developing flashbacks that tells us the life of Maciej, and more interesting, he concludes the almost inconclusive story of "Man of Marble" (the ending scene from that film appears in "Man of Iron" in the middle and from there we are able to see what happened to those characters, asking some questions about the film made by the documentary). To fully understand "Man of Iron" watch the 1977 film is necessary, otherwise it will be a confusing and difficult experience to understand the characters motivations, emotions, the political background (also you need to research more about what happened in Poland between 1960's and 1980's).

I liked this film because of its involvement with a noble cause which was the strikes made by the Solidarity Union and the way Wajda was able to use this to make a relevant sequel of a great film yet is not a movie "selling" a group, or a political movement; it is a statement of how things were changing and who were the people behind these changes. Wajda directed this film during the controversial period, after all the government tended to persecute his oppositors and this film could be considered as a opposite propaganda, so the director took a lot of chance to make this wonderful film, a situation that resembles the one confronted by the female filmmaker in "Man of Marble", who is trying to make a film thesis about Maciej's father but she doesn't get enough assistance from her bosses that work for the Socialist regime.

The importance of this film was big enough during the time of its release since there was a sense of lack of information about how Solidarity was changing things in Poland, and a movie like this, that combines archive footage of the real events, and includes a cameo by Lech Walesa, was important to make their cause famous around the world. The great prestige was the Palm D'Or at Cannes, something that was viewed by many as a recognition to the movement and not much of stating that this was a great film. Indeed, I think that it combines both, since both were triumphant and Walesa few years away would be elected Poland's President.

The things that made this an inferior film compared to the previous film is the political subject and the way it was used in the film, in extended dialogues and scenes that were a little distracting, and some confusion in the presentation. The screenplay covered a more complex subject and intertwine the flashbacks reminding us about some of the characters and bring back memories from the first film. As you see, it's very difficult to put altogether, but the film succeeds in its great message. More of the humanistic aspect of being involved in solidarity and strikes than the far too rational political theme would make this film ten times better than it is. As both films points out, knowing the past is very important so that we can built a better future, and viewers, pay attention to the past moments presented here, so that you can understand their future and all of their struggle. 9/10

This film movement, while in no way the most important film movement artistically, considerably helped morally support and unite the Poles into a decade long, almost nation-wide rebellion against the Communist party which bloomed into the freeing of the Polish state from Soviet rule. This was a catalyst for the break-up of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the end of the cold war, and a new stability in Europe, and indeed the world. Only taking this into account can one watch "Czlowiek z Zelaza" and truly appreciate how powerful this film is.

What you need to know about "Man of Iron":

1. Palme D'Or 1981

2.Wajda's sequel to "Man of Marble"

3.Sweet-a** performances from Poland's acting elite

****NOTE**** Ok, you really do have to have a Warsaw-pact historical/political background when approaching this film, because it's compactly interwoven into flashback sequences recalling various anti-commie events (worker's movements and so on). And yes, that's mustachioed Lech Walesa making a cameo. If you have no idea what the Solidarnost movement was read up before watching this. Of course, the emotional and thus universal element is present (Maciek and Agnieska's love, etc) but this is mostly a story of survival and determination in the face of corruption and political hostilities. Polish people took amazing steps against their government as early as the late 60s, and here we see the triumphant and climactic finish to these efforts. Wajda incorporates interesting documentary footage within the film to make it more effective and appealing to his audience.

See "Man of Iron" and feel nostalgia for the times when Eastern Europe saw change as a forthcoming and hopeful force. Classic.

"Precz z zaplesniala elita wladzy!" "Do away with the moldy old governing elite!"

• Graffiti in Gdansk, 1981

Mass protests always seem to be about such basic things, e.g. stop killing us, or give us enough money so that we can feed ourselves, and here under Soviet communism it was the same. The context of Wajda's film is extraordinary, as it was made in 1981 during the heart of the Solidarity movement, and wove a fictional sequel to his 'Man of Marble' amidst the real-life story of the Gdansk shipyard workers practically while it was taking place. In the documentary 'Wajda by Wajda,' he explained the genesis of the film thusly: "I entered the shipyard in August 1980, going from the gate to the room where the workers were deliberating. I was led by one of the shipyard workers with a white and red armband. He showed me into the room and said: 'Mr. Andrzej, make a movie about us!'"

The film shows the usual management responses to worker organization - the playbook never seems to change, just the characters/country/time in history - and it includes police brutality, corruption of the union bosses, propaganda (here leaflets dropped from an airplane instead of posted on the internet), provocation as a way of inciting violence and to put pressure on the unity of the group, and infiltration. It's amazing that a brief window in the evolution of the government allowed all of this to be shown, another in a string of remarkable successes for Wajda over his career in this regard.

Unfortunately, I think the storytelling doesn't quite live up to the historical moment, and at 153 minutes, the film is too long. It was probably a mistake to first center it on the infiltrator, a man torn between both sides and whose desperate need for vodka seems to underscore how lost he is (at one point he breaks a bottle in the bathroom, and using a towel, soaks it up, wrings it out, and carefully avoiding broken glass, drinks it...ugh). We don't see Krystyna Janda's character until the 98 minute point, and even then it seemed a narrative mistake, as for the next 20-30 minutes we get a long flashback that for me was defocusing, including footage of her wedding, even if that did allow Lech Walesa to appear in another way. I think Wajda got a little bogged down in trying to tell the ending to 'Man of Marble' the way he had wanted to, though I suppose in taking pains to do this, he illustrated the handing off a struggle from one generation to the next.

Where the film shines is in showing us these real moments of progress in Poland, and it has a place in Polish history for doing so. As the father (Birkut from the first film, now a shipyard worker) debates with son (a student, also played by Jerzy Radziwilowicz), his simple line "No lie can last forever" is incredibly moving. Later one of their elderly mothers says "We are going to win. If not now, then next time," indicating dogged optimism and the need for sustained protest, over years and generations. When we see the real-life footage of interviews of striking workers and they talk about cost of living and one says "They know that today workers aren't ignoramuses from the 18th century," it comes from a place of intelligence and courage. And lastly when we see the great Lech Walesa and his fellow members of the strike committee, it's powerful, powerful stuff. It gave me goosebumps when we first see him walking through a crowd, set to the acoustic guitar of Maciej Pietrzyk's "Piosenka dla córki" (Song for daughter). The ending, with Walesa being carried on the shoulders of protesters in the real-life story and the son honoring his father's makeshift grave in the fictional one, is very strong. Whatever his faults, Wajda again bore witness, and to have made the film in 1981 I think he was deserving of the awards he received.