L'uomo di ferro

A radio journalist sets out to discredit the leader of a strike at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980. Director Andrzej Wajda's 1981 film is a prize winner and one of the most celebrated Polish films of the late 20th century, whose screenplay by Aleksander Scibor-Rylski continues the stories of characters featured in the slightly better 'Man of Marble'. This 2 and a half hour film brings the story right up to date(with flashbacks to another strike in 1970) with the then current real life headlines in Poland of strikes,Solidarity and martial law, which seemed to go on for ever in the early 1980s. The central character Tomczyk has some similarities to Lech Walesa(who appears as himself in this film),in a film where art imitates life, or life imitates art. We had an Iron Lady so why shouldn't Poland have a Man of Iron?

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!

A great movie about Poland's history containing also authentic material from the civil disorders. The movie handles also the viewpoint of individual in communist system. Screenplay is great.

Nine stars out of ten.

There's just one thing that strikes me as odd and keeps me from giving the film ten stars. The wonderful protagonist of Man Of Marble, Agnieszka, is turned here into a stereotypical, boring wife/girlfriend. At a time of great historical importance , when issues she deeply cared about were the talk of Europe, all she finds time to discuss with a reporter who visits her at the detention center is romance. I'm having a hard time picturing the dedicated, driven and idealistic young person we know from Man Of Marble gasp unintelligibly about a child when her husband is on strike with Lech Walesa. A needless and surprising flaw in an otherwise great film.

"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.