Reviews

Oh what a disappointment this movie is. I can't believe it was directed by Wajda. There's practically no plot and 90% of the movie consists of various people walking in and out of the screen, weakly trying to interact with each other while talking about the Katyn massacre. The most interesting part comes right at the end, but by that time I simply stopped caring while trying to suppress my yawns.

Almost the entire movie is filmed with a hand-held camera, which is supposed to convey the feeling of "personal immediacy" but there's nothing personal or immediate about most of the movie. Instead, the constant jerking of the camera made me seasick. To be fair, there are some great shots too (no pun intended), but nothing that makes you go "Wow!".

If you're not familiar with the Katyn massacre, the movie will leave you scratching your head. If you are familiar, you'll be scratching your head too, although maybe for different reasons. Basically, the movie states and restates over and over again that it was the Soviets who murdered thousands of Polish soldiers in 1940. This point is hammered repeatedly as though someone in the audience needed to be convinced of this basic historical fact. However, the movie never tries to explain as to WHY they were killed. After all, tens of thousands of Polish soldiers in the other Soviet POW camps were not harmed and were released in 1941. It is also never explained adequately HOW MANY people perished, although the figure 20,000 is thrown in a couple of times.

The acting is adequate with only Komorowska (old woman) and Chyra (Lt. Jerzy) giving noticeable performances, but they get to act for maybe 10-15 minutes in total. Certainly not enough to carry the whole movie. Many other actors seem to have been chosen more for their matinée looks rather than their acting abilities, but I won't mention their names. Suffice to say that they are definitely NOT the Oscar material, so any claims that this movie was "robbed" of the Academy Award are simply laughable.

The tone of movie is wrong as well. On one hand it tries to be an accurate historical drama, on the other it resorts to cheap anti-Soviet propaganda such as showing a Russian soldier tear up the Polish flag and using it to clean his boots. Then there are some puzzling scenes which have absolutely no bearing on the plot, such as a couple climbing on a roof or the liquidation of the Krakow University.

There are many missed opportunities to make this movie more interesting, such as adding a political angle to the story, or showing the German discovery of the graves, or even portraying Anna's trip from the Soviet occupied part to the German occupied Krakow. All of these aspects could have been the major part of the movie, but instead they're reduced to a couple of minutes. In the end, we get a collection of loosely fitting, confusing, boring scenes about the reaction of Poles to one of their greatest tragedies of WWII. Not very compelling and not worthy of Wajda at all.