KATYN
Poland, 2007, 118 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Andrzej Wajda.
For more than fifty years, Andrej Wajda has chronicled the history of 20th century Poland. Initially, in the 1950s, he told stories of World War II and the Polish resistance. Later he ventured back into earlier history but, in the 1970s, he took up themes of the Soviet dominance of Poland, propaganda and the unrest that led to the Solidarity movement (Man of Marble, Man of Iron). As he grew older, he dramatised 19th century historical battles and epic poems like Pan Tadeusz.
At the age of 80, he has returned to World War II, a personal as well as a national quest, as his father died in the massacre that he now portrays.
It deals with events not known by those outside Poland and, as the drama shows, an event that was covered up for half a century.
The key event was the capture and subsequence execution of over 10,000 Polish officers. Victims of a secret pact between Berlin and Moscow in 1939, the Russians executed these men, burying them in mass graves. When Russia and Germany became enemies, the Russians changed the official dates of the killings
and attributed them to the German forces. During and after the war, this was the official line, the truth being revealed only in the late 1980s with Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s finally acknowledging what happened.
As might be expected, Wajda keeps the re-enactment until the end of his film. Most of the film is not about the officers (there are some sequences establishing relationships, tensions and uncertainties). Rather, it is about the families affected by the long absence, the list of names of the dead and the sadness and loneliness: the wife and daughter of one officer; his mother and his interned professor father; a nephew turning up after the war wanting to study; the wife of a general and her being urged to sign a document accusing the Germans of the atrocities; the sister of a victim trying to set up a tombstone stating the truth; the comrade of the officer who has survived the war and is a Russian soldier.
This episodic style is often difficult to follow as characters suddenly turn up without our knowing exactly who they are. While this can be dramatically disconcerting, there is no doubting the intensity of the re-creation of the period, the war atmosphere in Kracow and, ultimately, the savage massacre.
1.Wajda and the fifty years of his work, his embodying Polish cinema after World War Two, his range of themes: history, World War Two, Resistance, the communist era, Solidarity, changes, the collapse of communism? His chronicle of Poland?
2.The personal interest in this film, his father killed at Katyn, the background of the massacre, the cover-up, the expose?
3.The re-creation of period, 1939, Krakow, life in Krakow? The attack by the Germans in September, the attack by the Russians in the east? The crowds of people at the bridge, the cars, confusion? Anna and her finding the camp, her husband, the officers imprisoned?
4.The Katyn story – the number of Polish officers, the massacre? It being seen and visualised only at the end? The officers, the Russians, the cruelty, the massacre, the shooting of the individuals, the mass graves? 1939, the officers arrested, the army men let go? Taken to Russia, the trains, the cold in the camp, the focus on Andrzej, Jerzy, their talk, lending the pullover, Pilot and his being an engineer, his anger and outbursts, their calming him? The general and his speech at Christmas? The spirit amongst the officers? The later information about the list, the names on the list, the Russians and their attributing the massacre to the Germans, the continued cover-up by the Russians?
5.The Russian-German? agreement, Berlin, Beria in Moscow, the agreement, Stalin signing it? The later attack on the Germans? The post-war attitudes, the Russians preserving the German fiction? The student trying to enrol, the sister trying to get the correct date on the tombstone, the newsreels about Katyn?
6.The film consisting of episodes during and after the war:
(a) The wife, her child, seeing her husband in the camp, his commitment to his officers, going to Krakow, staying with her mother-in-law, the professor, his going to the talk, the Nazi haranguing the staff, the closing of the university, the arresting of all the teachers, their being bundled into the trucks, going to the camp, hard labour, the professor’s death, his ashes returned?
(b) The general and his speech to the soldiers, his wife at home at Christmas, alone? Seeing the newsreel? The officials asking her to sign a letter accusing the Germans? Her pondering, refusal? The post-war screening and her objecting?
(c) The young man, coming to his aunt, his studies, going to the university, the issue of the documents, the truth about the massacre, his wanting to tell the truth, the attitude of the dean and the professors, the encounter with the girl, the date, his being run over after being pursued?
(c) Pilot’s sister, in the Resistance, wanting to make the tombstone, to tell the truth of the date, the authorities, the smashing of the tombstone?
(d) Jerzy, the Russian official, surviving Katyn, the truth about what happened, the list, his lending the pullover to Andrzej, his discussion about the documents and the archives with the professor, that they be sent to Andrzej’s widow? His shooting himself?
(e) The documents given to Andrzej’s wife, her learning of the truth?
7.The film as a mosaic, of the war, the aftermath? The expressed pessimism about a free Poland? The collapse of communism and the 21st century retrospective?
8.The dramatic effect of keeping the massacre till the end – and the audience leaving with the impression of the massacre?
