The 1940 Katyn massacre, in which the Russian NKVD murdered several thousand Polish soldiers, has been looming over Andrzej Wajda for his whole life. The great director’s father died in the atrocity and a weighty lie about the incident – that
the Nazis were responsible – was imbedded in the fetid foundations of the Soviet- dominated Polish state.
Nearly 20 years after the Communists were driven from power, Wajda has finally got round to addressing the issue and the resulting film, though occasionally unfocused, is as uncomfortably powerful as you might expect.
The final depiction of the slaughter generates sorrow, and bewilderment, but the strongest emotion is, surely, anger. Quite right too. Certain things are worth staying furious about.
Utilising appropriately mournful chords from Krzysztof Penderecki, Wajda lays out the story in sober, unhurried fashion. We begin with a scene that sums up swathes of Polish history in one absurd, tragic moment. It is 1939 and, while one horde of citizens flees the Germans, another tries to escape advancing Russians. They run up against one another on a bridge in Krakow.
The film goes on to detail the detention of Polish officers by the Soviets – this is, remember, the era of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – and the subsequent discovery of a mass of bodies in a remote forest. Back in Krakow, mothers fret about sons, wives about husbands and children about fathers. Years later, some decide to speak out about the great lie, but most remain judiciously silent.
Put simply, Katyn is flawless in its depiction of public events, but a tad underwhelming in its efforts to engage with individual life stories. The action flits a little too quickly from one character to the next and
the script struggles to pack in all attitudes and all experiences.
No thinking viewer will, however, remain unmoved by the properly awful denouement. Detailing the murders in coolly disciplined fashion, the director wisely shows the “how”, but doesn’t dare to explain the “why”.
After all, no answer to such a question would be satisfactory.
