I did something very unusual for me, which was to download a film that's not even been released yet. Sometimes I'll watch something online in a youtube-style window if it's not coming out or I have no desire whatsoever to see it in the cinema, but up til now I've only downloaded older movies that are completely unavailable here. Anyway, this is a film I've wanted to see from the day the foreign language oscar submissions were announced as it is Andrzej Wajda doing a war movie about an atrocity committed by the Russians against the Poles in World War II. Problem is though that even with the Oscar nomination it received there are still seemingly no plans for a release here (it's gone straight to TV in eastern european countries) and the last time a Wajda film got a theatrical release in the UK was in 1990. So I don't feel too bad about doing it, but it's not something I'm proud of.
This is to Wajda what The Pianist was to fellow Pole Roman Polanski, having a very personal attachment to the story as in this case Andrzej's father actually died in Katyn. The story is about the massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest by the Russians and the subsequent cover up (they tried to blame the Germans once they began fighting each other). So a big "important" issue for the film and would it be wrong to suggest that it is that subject matter that got it the oscar nomination it eventually (and one might say "inevitably") received?
Yes and no, I'd suggest. The problem with the film is that there is no central narrative and there are jumps in time and perspective which are not easy to follow and show a lack of focus. This would seem to lend credit to the subject matter pulling the film through, but it is very well made, the score is evocative, the cinematography interesting and the performances all solid (I particularly liked Magdalena Cielecka as the sister of a Katyn victim who refused to acknowledge that he was killed by the Germans in 1941 and not the Russians in 1940).
The final 15 minutes are very moving and give the film a real boost as it packs an emotional punch. The thing is though that we don't really know the characters, so an opportunity was actually missed (symptomatic of the whole film actually), but it speaks volumes to the power of the story that it's moving anyway. The opening is a little overdramatic (the girl repeatedly shouting "DADDY!" as his train takes him away) and it is a tad episodic, but from about a third of the way in that diminishes and the last half moves along briskly and doesn't get bogged down by the weight of the "importance".
So I do think it is a good film in its own right and while that may have more than a little to do with the real life story, I can see why people would really respond to it. I personally wouldn't have nominated it from the list of submitted movies at the oscars last year (and I've only seen 14 of the films, with at least half as many again I'm anticipating) but it's not that far off at all. A very watchable, moving, but unfocused film that I hope to be able to see on the big screen at some point.