Katyn

With Katyn (2007), Andrzej Wajda, born on March 6, 1926, returned to a theme that shaped his entire life, the direction of his thinking, and his education. For him, the theme of the Katyn massacre was a theme of processing historical failure on a broader scale and his father's story in a narrower perspective. Post Mortem was the original title of the film, which was later changed to make the film easier to identify. Apart from the final realization, Wajda's journey to this project is of course a very powerful story. While before 1989 Wajda could not even think about it and did not deal with the issue, much has changed with the current political situation. It was no longer necessary to appeal for interest from abroad - it was possible to consider making the film in Poland. The key sub-themes were the questions of the crime itself and the lie that overshadowed it. The crime was carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940 and for many years was blamed on Germany and dated back to 1941. Wajda narrates this crucial split and its effects on the various layers of Polish society through the lens of women - mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. Wajda processes his own lived experiences with his own mother and her faith, which sustained her until the end of the war. He does not project himself into the film script, even anonymizing the individual stories, and in a defining way records an account of the multi-layered transformation of Polish society during the war years and the period that immediately followed. Wajda thought long and hard about the literature he could rely on, the most valuable being the memoirs of the eyewitness Józef Czapski. This helped him make the final decision to make a film without any compromises. The preparation process took a decade, but as he himself noted, the subject could not pass him by. In the end, he described Katyn (2007) as a farewell to the phenomenon of the Polish Film School. When Polish television interviewed him, full of piety and palpable respect, they recalled his films about the Nazi resistance - A Generation (1955), which was about the Warsaw Uprising - Canal (1957), and of course his most famous film from the May 1945 days - Ashes and Diamonds (1958). Wajda recalled at the time that he consciously returned to the narrative style of that time period, but also that he combined it with the latest technology. Another important moment in its preparation was two books of memories written by the daughters of those executed in Katyn, who wrote memoirs about the transformations of their mothers, which set the direction for the family histories told through female characters. For example, a small domestic debate between a professor from Jagiellonian University and his wife shortly before his arrest stands out in this way very effectively and without pathos. The same goes for the transformation of the relationship between two sisters who lost their brother and each of them took a different side in the new political division of Poland after the war. The culmination of all the layers of the Katyn film is, of course, the depiction of the genocide of the intelligentsia through the routine actions of NKVD members. Symbolic is the detail of the differentiated experiences of each individual. It's fantastic how empathetic Wajda is to today's generation and the contradiction of questions of awareness of the past and fear of awareness of the past. Thinking about this topic, he went as far as making his film more attractive by using young actors, so as not to burden the young audience with his favorite generation of actors. It is also very interesting to see how much Wajda is able to maintain dialogue on the topic of honor and the transformation of this phenomenon in today's sense. He realized that he did not want to make another film about Polish suffering, but rather to reopen the question of guilt and blame. From my point of view, the work of depicting the dual nature of Reich and Soviet film propaganda is absolutely crucial. On the one hand, the Germans are portrayed as the classic essence of evil, but with a document from Katyn in their hands to defend themselves, which is projected privately within the story to the general, who sees through this. On the other hand, the same images from 1943 are soon accompanied by a new commentary in favor of the Soviet propaganda against which the general attempts to speak out. The absolute chaos of the government in 1939 is another theme, but it is only sketchily depicted here. More space is devoted to responsibility and Polish patriotism. To the thesis of the sacrifice of their best sons and abandoned women who become mute witnesses to the changing political situation in the bipolar post-war world. One of the best-embedded stories is the contrast between the three siblings, i.e., two sisters and a brother. Their brother has been executed, one of the sisters sacrifices her life to ensure he has a true tombstone, and the last surviving sister realizes that the People's Republic of Poland is about to be eternal and therefore there is no room for dialogue. In addition, no important marginalia has been omitted. Initially, the NKVD may have thought that they would never be punishable and thus left the personal belongings of the executed people with them. And yet it was relatively easy in the eyes of the public to postpone the event of the genocide by a whole year. And yet it cost the lives of many others. Those who survived could, like Wajda, continue in the second generation of the Polish intelligentsia and represent the new Polish society on a global level. I don't think that the raw mechanism of genocide alone is the strongest moment. Personally, I see many partial highlights in Wajda's Katyn - especially the arrest of the Jagiellonian University top brass evoking all the positive emotions attached to patriotism, or the dialogue bringing home the idea of the seeming irreplaceability of the representatives of the intelligentsia and the replaceability of killing machines. (06/08/2012) (less) (more)