Katyn (Andrzej Wajda, 2007)

[MichaelB]

Wajda's new film Katyn has a website - originally in Polish only, but they've since added an English section (complete with subtitled trailer).

This is pretty close to my most eagerly awaited film this year. Wadja's in his early eighties now, but since he's managed to muster the biggest budget ever given to a Polish film, he's obviously fully in command of his logistical faculties, and the trailer's shot of a Polish flag being abruptly ripped into red and white halves suggests he hasn't lost his eye for an arresting image either.

The only thing that slightly concerns me is that this film is clearly so important both to Poland generally and Wajda in particular (his father was one of the Katyn victims, but the subject was completely taboo until the 1990s, as it was politically impossible to mention that the Russians were the perpetrators) that there's a danger of playing safe and trying to be as balanced as possible at the expense of the drama - but Wajda's not the kind of artist normally given to that sort of compromise, and in any case Katyn was presumably made with far greater artistic freedom than most of his output.

It's premiering in Poland on 17 September (the date is not a coincidence - Wajda wants to highlight the fact that while everyone knows that the Nazis invaded on 1 September 1939, the USSR also invaded 17 days later), and hopefully will go international soon after. And although the last Wajda film to open in my native Britain was Korczak way back in 1990, hopefully the obvious importance of Katyn on historical grounds alone will help sway distributors. That, and the fact that the UK's Polish population has massively increased since May 2004 - Wajda's last feature was made two years earlier.

I still haven't seen this myself, but the New York Review of Books ran a lengthy piece - by far the most in-depth I've encountered in English - on the film by Anne Applebaum (author of that recent study of Stalin's Gulags).

The Economist also reviewed it - I think the original is hidden behind a subscriber wall, but it was reproduced in full here. The international premiere is at next month's Berlin Film Festival, out of competition.

[davebert]

Any American distributor now that it's got a Best Foreign Oscar nom? My interest has certainly been piqued... I had no idea before I IMDB'd some of the nominees that this was a Wajda production. I guess I kinda forgot about him and assumed he was dead.

[rwaits]

I guess I kinda forgot about him and assumed he was dead.

Thats probably just about the worst assumption you can make about someone!

Seriously though, I too am a bit surprised this isn't getting more attention over here. I'm dying to see it!

[MichaelB]

Wajda's been making films more or less continuously since the 1950s (the gaps are rarely more than a couple of years), but he hasn't had a film distributed in Britain since 1990's Korczak - and when I recently checked, just two of his films were out on British DVD labels (Danton and the inevitable Ashes and Diamonds).

The situation is slightly better in the US - certainly in terms of DVD coverage - but he's still been quite badly neglected.

Mind you, my Polish friends tell me that the post-1990 stuff is unlikely to appeal much to non-Poles, and some of it's downright terrible. Katyn itself has been getting decidedly mixed reviews - at least as a piece of dramatic filmmaking: it's clearly hugely important in terms of national catharsis.

Anyway, word on the grapevine is that Katyn will be playing in London within the next three or four months, which I think will be its first English-speaking territory.

[MichaelB]

Given that the film's finally getting a British theatrical release in a couple of months, I thought I'd revive this thread.

I watched it for the third time last week (first on DVD, second on 35mm, third on Blu-ray) and haven't really changed my mind about it: clearly very effective (and necessary) as national catharsis, but rather less satisfying as a piece of drama - largely because it's several fairly discrete pieces of drama, with some subplots seemingly tacked on so Wajda can explore the subject from as many angles as possible. In fact, most of the subplots could easily be expanded to an hour-long miniseries episode, which is why the film often feels strangely truncated. (I also felt the much-vaunted Penderecki score felt equally bitty, largely because it consists of gobbets of already-published work - fans of The Shining will certainly recognise 'The Awakening of Jacob' at the end).

Granted, Wajda was aiming squarely at a Polish audience, which is why there's next to no contextualisation for those unfamiliar with the history - I checked with Artificial Eye, but they're distributing exactly the same version that was released in Poland. The Polish-centric focus, while absolutely understandable, also means that we get next to no insight into the background politics: Stalin is only mentioned briefly in passing, and the motivation for the Katyn massacre (the absolute subjugation of the Poles through the deliberate slaughter of its military and intellectual elite) is never discussed at all.

On the other hand, parts of the film are immensely powerful, especially the opening, the General's Christmas Eve speech to the POWs, the scene in the bar where Jerzy cracks up, and the last 10-15 minutes, where Wajda seems to be trying to outdo Kieslowski's A Short Film About Killing in the borderline-unwatchable violence stakes (though with just as much contextual justification).

[eltopo]

DVD "Ascot Elite/Pandastorm" - Germany (2,35:1 anamorph): http://www.ofdb.de/view.php?page=fassun ... vid=293817" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



DVD "Koch Lorber Films" (1.78:1 anamorph)

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews46/katyn.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MichaelB]

The Artificial Eye Blu-ray (2.35:1) was going for £10 in the Oxford Street HMV yesterday.

Incidentally, the film was given a peaktime screening on one of the main Russian television channels in the wake of Saturday's Polish presidential plane crash, which I think was the first opportunity most Russians would have had to see it.

[Paul Moran]

The Artificial Eye Blu-ray (2.35:1) was going for £10 in the Oxford Street HMV yesterday.

Even cheaper on-line: £8.99 at HMV and Amazon.co.uk.

[Finch]

The film is very good but I'd agree that a bit more contextualisation would have helped audiences with no advance knowledge of the topic to get involved more easily. As a drama, I thought it worked fine but I won't deny that there is a sense of detachment from the material to some extent, and the narrative means the film uses to lead us into the finale felt not particularly satisfying but all the same, it is often a very powerful and harrowing work (coincidentally, Wajda employs the same Penderecki score as Scorsese in Shutter Island). I also think that knowing already how the film ends does not diminish its emotional impact: the finale is absolutely devastating and one of the most haunting individual setpieces I'll have seen all year. Finally wanted to single out an exquisite moving shot in the scene that Michael mentioned previously when the General addresses the officers at Christmas Eve: how the camera moves back away from the General to reveal a hall stacked with officers and soldiers and then adopts a bird's eye perspective of the men was a wonderful demonstration of Wajda's craftsmanship.

Artifical Eye's Blu-Ray is very good: fine grain, excellent detail and a competent though rarely sub-woofer testing DTS HD track (though I seem to recall that the names of the murdered POWs were supposed to show on screen while a requiem plays just prior to the credits? The Blu-Ray merely shows a black screen to the choir for approx a minute before it cuts to the credits)