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Katyn (Film)

by Julian Wood | May 27, 2009 13:19 | Edited May 27, 2009 13:20

“…a powerful human story.”

We should count ourselves lucky when a master filmmaker continues to deliver solid films into their old age. In Katyn, the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda (Man Of Iron, Man Of Marble) has given us an impressive mature work. Many of Wajda's films have been about the pivotal period immediately after WW2. It was the German invasion of Poland which of course precipitated the war, and then, after the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact, the Poles saw the Nazis driven out only to be enslaved by their Soviet liberators. The evasions and distortions around this murky period are still a vexed issue.

 

Katyn's narrative is carried by two couples: an old professor and his wife, and a young officer and his girlfriend Anna (a good performance by Maja Ostaszewska). The professor thinks that university life will continue untouched, but he finds that the hallowed halls are not exempt. The Nazis storm in and round up all the "anti-German" intellectuals to transport them to labour camps. Once such thuggery has been unleashed, it is likely to infect the whole of civilised society. The young officer fights for the Polish army, but he still ends up at the same fateful spot in the Katyn forest where thousands of officers and intellectuals were massacred by The Red Army.

 

The film's thread is carried by the women, who are compelled to pursue the truth about how their loved ones died. In the newly-occupied Communist Poland, and with a party committed to re-writing history, this is dangerous territory. Finally Anna cannot bear the fact that the lies pile upon each other like corpses in the secret mass grave.

 

This may sound grim, but the film as a whole is characterised by its sweeping grasp of history, and is movingly couched in a powerful human story.