| Andrzej Wajda's KATYN |
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| Wednesday, 07 May 2008 | |
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With Polanski's The Pianist, Verhoeven's Black Book and Menzel's I Served the King of England, the present decade has been kind to veteran directors staging comebacks via large-scale, often autobiographical projects dealing with World War 2. On paper, Wajda's Katyń looks like the latest example of this mini-trend. One of the most expensive Polish productions ever mounted at a reported €4m, it addresses the still-controversial Katyń massacre of March 5th 1940, when 5,000 Polish officers were executed in a forested area near Smolensk by Soviet forces (another 17,000 were killed elsewhere on the same day as part of the same operation, bringing the toll to around 22,000.) The Soviets initially tried to blame the Nazis for the killing - using cinema propaganda to get their "message" across - and even now the arguments over responsibility continue to rumble on. Wajda, whose father was among the victims, adapted (with Przemyslaw Nowakowski) Andrzej Mularczyk's well-regarded book Post Mortem, and worked with esteemed collaborators such as cinematographer Pawel Edelman (Oscar-nominated for The Pianist) and composer Krzystof Penderecki. The resulting film is as serious, professional and sober as one would expect, its focus alternating between several of the men murdered at Katyń (almost all of which were officer-class POWs) and their relations - mainly women - back home in Poland, the time-frame moving back and forward between 1939 and the immediate post-war period until, in the final reel, we witness the forest slaughter itself. This sequence is, as one would expect, a bleak and chilling depiction of the mechanics of mass slaughter, with soldier after soldier dispatched with a single bullet to the back of the head before being pitched into one of many mass graves. And its impact is such that it almost - but not quite - counterbalances the deficiencies of what's gone before. Because whereas Polanski, Verhoeven and Menzel executed their war epics with an engaging freshness and vitality, Wajda's approach comes off as stiffly starchy: a "prestige" drama weighed down by its own scale and reverence. The screenplay is episodic and diffuse, especially in latter stretches which abruptly introduce unfamiliar characters who exit the scene before they're able to make much impact. Performances are competent but often stagey, as if everyone involved was so conscious of the project's importance that they forgot to actually make a movie in the process. There are effective little touches here and there, but otherwise Katyń is like a dauntingly heavy kind of painting, an airless enterprise that may serve as a necessary history-lesson for future generations, but which even now seems distractingly dated as a drama - and not just because of the post-synch dubbing applied to certain characters' dialogue. Katyń is a solid, impeccably well-intentioned period piece, opulent in its attention to details of decor and character, but this particular story really deserves better. And even with the stunning climax - which is guaranteed to send audiences out of the cinema reflective and harrowed - Wajda's approach raises troubling questions. While Katyń isn't particularly nationalistic, and presents a plausible version of the "historical truth" which so taxes several of the characters, it does become more than a little heavy-handed on the issue of religion. At various key points, religious faith is presented as crucial to the Polish people in general, and to the victims of Katyń and their families in particular - and this is no doubt an accurate reflection of reality. Wajda and his scriptwriting collaborators take this a step further, however, in the final sequence by including what may be most accurately described as a miracle: a small miracle, to be sure, but a miracle nonetheless, and somewhat incongruous in what's been previously such a solid, realistic and carefully factual work. Wajda and co imagine several of the Katyń victims reciting the Lord's Prayer as they are led to their deaths, in a kind of "relay" (impossible in rational, objective terms) whereby each officer - out of earshot of his compatriots - mutters a single line. Given the scale of the atrocity, it would seem impossible to come up with a "miracle of Katyń". But that is what Wajda - clearly intending to show the victims as united by their faith, even in death - has attempted here. It's ironic and disappointing that a film which is, to some extent, about the dangerous power of filmed propaganda, should feel the need to include such a detail at such a charged, crucial moment. Neil Young 7th May, 2008 KATYN : [5/10] : Andrzej WAJDA : Poland 2008 : 118m : seen Berlinale Palast, 15th March 2008 (press show) : Berlinale [Berlin International Film Festival] other reviews from Berlinale 2008 |
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