The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

War drama

DIRECTOR

Andrzej Wajda

WRITERS

Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Andrzejewski (screenplay); Jerzy Andrzejewski (novel)

STARS

Zbigniew Cybulski, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Adam Pawlikowski, Bogumil Kobiela

BEFORE

1955 Wajda’s directorial debut, A Generation, is the story of Stach, a wayward teen living in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland, during World War II.

AFTER

1969 After the death of actor Zbigniew Cybulski in a train wreck, Wajda channeled his grief into his next, highly personal work, Everything for Sale, a movie within a movie.

The title of Andrzej Wajda’s war movie comes from a line of romantic poetry by 19th-century Polish poet Cyprian Norwid: “Will there remain among the ashes a star-like diamond, the dawn of eternal victory?” It is this uncertainty that characterizes all of Wajda’s movies, most of which recreate the horror and heartbreak of Poland’s recent history—from its occupation by the Nazis during World War II to the Stalinist regime that lasted until 1989—in order to make sense of it. They sift through the wreckage of ordinary people’s lives, looking for glimmers of hope.

Wajda emerged as a world-class filmmaker during the renaissance of Polish cinema in the 1950s. He made three movies dealing with the war. A Generation (1955) followed a group of men and women fighting in Nazi-occupied Poland. This was followed by Kanal (1957), which chronicles the tragic events of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which Polish Resistance fighters were crushed by the German army. Third was Ashes and Diamonds, an angry, melancholy movie set during the chaos of the German occupation’s aftermath, once the dust of the liberation had begun to settle.

Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is plunged into self doubt when he meets Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska). His crisis is played out over a single night—May 8, 1945, the last day of war, when Poland, too, is deeply divided.

Questioning the cause

Ashes and Diamonds focuses on Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), a young soldier in Poland’s right-wing Nationalist Army who fought in the uprising against the Nazis with the goal of establishing Polish sovereignty. As the Soviet Union takes control, Maciek is ordered to assassinate a new Communist official, but he has second thoughts about waging a doomed war against the incoming left-wing administration. He bungles the murder, killing two bystanders.

Torn between his conscience and loyalty to the cause for which he fought in the war, Maciek embarks on a second half-hearted attempt at the killing. This time he is waylaid when he falls in love with Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), who works at the hotel in which his target is a guest. She confuses him further, forcing him to question the beliefs that have driven him for as long as he can remember. Looking up at the sky, Maciek sees fireworks exploding in the darkness. The fireworks—glittering diamonds rising from the ashes of Warsaw—announce Germany’s surrender and the end of war. Yet Wajda’s trademark note of uncertainty hangs in the air: it’s the end of an era for Poland, but what will the future bring?

“You know not if flames bring freedom or death.”

Krystyna / Ashes and Diamonds

Dubious dawn

“What did you do during the uprising?” is a question that echoed around daily lives in Poland for decades after the war. In his portrait of one man’s fractured identity, Wajda constantly draws our attention to broken glass and splintered buildings. This sense of fracture runs through the country, and cannot be ignored.

In the ruins of a bombed-out church, Maciek reflects on his equally battered ideals. It is here that Krystyna finds an inscription of the poem from which the movie takes its name.

Born in Poland in 1926, Andrzej Wajda became one of his country’s most celebrated filmmakers. He lived through the German occupation of Europe, which shaped most of his work. A key figure of the “Polish Film School,” he brought a fresh air of neorealism to his depictions of the men and women who endured the war, and his movies play an enormously important part in understanding what happened to Poland—and the world—in the last century.

1957 Kanal

1958 Ashes and Diamonds

1975 The Promised Land

1977 Man of Marble

What else to watch: How to Be Loved (1963) ✵ The Army of Shadows (1969) ✵ The Birch Wood (1970) ✵ The Promised Land (1975) ✵ Man of Marble (1977) ✵ Rough Treatment (1978) ✵ Man of Iron (1981) ✵ A Love in Germany (1983) ✵ Katyn (2007)