Film again, this time a War Trilogy by Andrzej Wajda, a prolific Polish director. I watched the films over a period of one month. They are very powerful, show the shocking and thoughtless damage of war and the consequences people have to face in the aftermath.
The first one is called A Generation and tells a story of a youth, petty criminal, who during the Nazi occupation robs German trains of coal, during one of the escapades his friend gets shot. Our protagonist gets an apprenticeship in a workshop and later on joins the communist movement.
Can you recognize the very young Roman Polanski in this picture?
The second film called Canal is about the Warsaw Uprising, the last days of struggle for the resistance fighters trying to escape from the Nazi oppressors through the Warsaw sewers, the opening line says:
“Watch them closely, for these are the last hours of their lives”
It’s a story of bravery, love and commitment. A homage to the young soldiers of the Home Army who fought for their country.
The last part of the trilogy is called Ashes and Diamonds. The action of the film happens on the last day of war, Germans surrendered, a couple of soldiers from the Home Army are assigned to kill a communist commissar however they end up shooting regular plant workers by accident. They still have to carry out the orders while one of them falls in love…
An excellent performance from a cult actor Zbigniew Cybulski who also acted in A Generation.
Warsaw was almost entirely destroyed after the war and there is this beautiful scene when one of the soldiers is trying to sweet talk a concierge into letting him a room; the concierge, a Varsovian, is reminiscing on the old capital.
Poetically shot brutal reality of war.
