• Post category:Movies
  • Post last modified:September 23, 2021

Katyn: Forest of Fear

katynOne would think that the 1940 massacre of roughly 22,000 Polish citizens in the Katyn forest is no longer a point of contention. Even though the Moscow lackeys who ran Poland from 1945 to 1989 blamed the mass murder on the Nazis, Mikhail Gorbachev himself acknowledged the Soviet Union’s responsibility in 1990 and produced the documents that showed how Joseph Stalin’s regime was to blame. Still, in spite of the evidence the Chinese regime chose to ban this film from being shown in their country because of “its ideology being not in line with the official view of the Chinese state”. Katyn may look conventional to some, but its power is hard to deny.

Invaded by two nations at the same time
The year is 1939. As Polish citizens are fleeing from the Nazi invasion at one end, they run into other fugitives who tell them that they’re running from the Russians. Their country is being invaded by two powerful nations at the same time, both run by bloodthirsty criminals. Over the years, throughout the war, we follow a group of people who are all related in one way or the other to one of the men who are executed in Katyn. His name is Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski), a captain in the Polish light cavalry regiment, who is taken prisoner by the Red Army and transferred to a POW camp. His wife Anna (Maja Ostaszewska), their daughter and his mother keep waiting for him to come back home. Andrzej’s father, a university professor (Wladyslaw Kowalski), is arrested by the Germans who consider the Polish academia a place of subversion, and sent to a camp.

When the war ends, Andrzej’s surviving family members still don’t know what has happened to him. The Katyn massacre was made public by the German authorities in the early ’40s, but Andrzej was never listed as a victim. However, one of his closest friends, Jerzy (Andrzej Chyra), knows that there was a mix-up…

Another dignified chapter
Legendary director Andrzej Wajda was in his eighties when he finally got around to making this film, a project he had dreamed about for many years. Throughout his career he had often portrayed the modern history of his beloved home country and Katyn became another dignified chapter, one that had a highly personal meaning to him since his father was one of the victims. Wajda chooses to focus on the relatives because the most fascinating and emotional part of the story belongs to them.

The opening scene brilliantly shows how Poland was caught in the middle between the murderous regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Old newsreels, first produced by the Nazis and then by the new Polish post-war regime, show how the dictatorships took advantage of the Katyn massacre and used it for propaganda. Those films are fascinating because of their similarity; the same facts are stated, only the culprits differ. Wajda’s grasp of history is an important part of this film, but he also stays firmly focused on the people who fell victim to Nazi and Communist atrocities.

The cast is quite moving, especially Ostaszewska as Andrzej’s wife and Maja Komorowska as his mother who rely on a general feeling that their beloved Andrzej is still alive. Wajda tells his tragic story in an emotional way without turning too sentimental.

The final half-hour is one of those moments where you can hardly breathe. In a flashback sequence, Wajda takes us back to that day in 1940 when Andrzej is taken to Katyn. Watching the Soviets master the art of killing as many people as possible in a very limited time makes you think of Auschwitz. It makes you think of an assembly line. This is a filmmaker showing us how his father was murdered and it is devastating to behold.

Katyn 2007-Poland. 118 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by Michal Kwiecinski. Directed by Andrzej Wajda. Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Przemyslaw Nowakowski, Wladyslaw Pasikowski. Book: Andrzej Mularczyk (“Post Mortem”). Cinematography: Pawel Edelman. Costume Design: Magdalena Biedrzycka. Cast: Andrzej Chyra (Jerzy), Maja Ostaszewska (Anna), Artur Zmijewski (Andrzej), Danuta Stenka, Jan Englert, Magdalena Cielecka. 

European Film Awards: Best Costume Design.

Last word: “Katyn is going to be shown in Russia. We’ve not found a Russian distributor yet, but it is enormously important for this film to be shown in Russia if Polish-Russian relations in the 21st century are to be based in truth, not lies. This film is not against the Russian people. It is about the horrors of the Stalin regime. In this forest in Katyn, there were many thousands of Russian civilians and soldiers killed brutally and put into mass graves. It was a graveyard for both the Poles and the Russians.” (Wajda in 2007, The Guardian)

 

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