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Andrzej Wajda - Three War Films Streaming. Movie Title: Andrzej Wajda - Three War Films Average customer review: Andrzej Wajda - Three War Films is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Andrzej Wajda - Three War Films

I have not seen A Generation, the first film in this box set, but I have seen the others. I felt compelled to write a review, because there was none so far and I wouldn’t want anyone to be turned off from these films due to ignorance. I am half-Polish and have visited the country half a dozen times since I was a little boy. What struck me most about Poland when I visited as a young man, was the kindness people expressed to each other, even if they were complete strangers. I asked an older woman for directions in the street and she pulled me close and put her arm around me in a motherly way, pointing in the direction I needed to go. The fact that such kindness and humanity have persisted under decades of oppressive totalitarian rule seems both ironic and appropriate. It’s as if the more Stalin beat down on the Polish people, the more resilient and warm-hearted they became. Knowing Polish people helps you understand their films. But, not everyone interested in Wajda can have that luxury, so I will try to give you a summary in a way you would relate to.

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Kanal is a very compelling film, very accessible to American audiences. It is taut, suspenseful and portrays the WWII conflict from a perspective I think many Americans will be unfamiliar with. Much of the film takes place in a sewer, as the refugees try to find an escape from certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Fans of claustrophobic thrillers will appreciate this. The atmosphere is almost choking at times. It’s a powerful experience. Steven Spielberg revealed in an interview that he screened Wajda’s war films to his crew in preparation for Saving Private Ryan, to give them a better sense of how to create the mise-en-scene of war torn Europe. Kanal contains some virtuosic camera work that should be of interest to any serious film student.

Ashes and Diamonds is a monumental film, probably the most important in all of Polish cinema. (the only other one that comes close is Wajda’s Man of Iron, winner of the Golden Palm in 1981). Zbigniew Cybulski is the antic, nervy hero, indeed a James Dean-like persona. Tragically, Cybulski also died young, missing a step while hopping onto a moving train, he fell and was crushed. Ashes and Diamonds will be of most significance to those familiar with the politics of the time and place. It’s not an easy film. In fact, it’s heartbreaking. But the staggeringly honest portrayal of conflicted allegiances to government and one’s soul will resonate with all who see it. A man is hired to assassinate another man. A simple story treated realistically, with all the second guessing and anguish a real person would feel. The Polish sense of compassion extends even to her enemies.

The cover art on this box set depicts a blood soaked bed sheet flapping on a clothesline. When I visited Poland, white sheets drying on clotheslines was a common sight, be it a rural or urban area. But beyond the evocation of war and bloodshed, the red blood has another significance. Red and White make up the bi-colored Polish flag, which closely resembles the bedsheet in the graphic. It is a symbol of Poland’s bloody history and the traumatic turmoil of this period in time.

This box set and Kieslowski’s the Decalogue comprise a healthy chunk of the brilliant cinema found in Poland, a country with one of the earliest and most successful film schools in the world.

These films come with high critical acclaim, yet rarely have they screened in local, Sydney, arthouse cinemas, and seldom are they mentioned in the ubiquitous “Top 100″ lists: I wondered how to explain this, but having viewed them I think the answer lies in their being admired rather than loved. The admiration is justified in terms of the formal qualities of the films, such as the excellent cinematography, the complex yet coherent story structures, and the charismatic performances elicited from the actors; the lack of unbridled affection is perhaps a reflection of the earnestness underlying the whole process, and the fact that the characters, while in many ways nuanced, can’t escape the burden of representing more than themselves, that is to say, being embodiments of ‘types’ or movements within Polish history.

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Criterion has provided an excellent treatment. The transfers are terrific. Wajda himself, along with his co-writer Morganstern, and a prominent Polish film critic, Plazewski, provide interviews, filmed in 2003 - there is 90 minutes of this and, while highly illuminating in many details, it also hints at the spirit which leadens the actual films. The weight of history and circumstance is felt by the director, and his peers, and it is hard for them to evade a tone of self-importance - this is well-justified, but still confers a heavy tone to proceedings. Criterion also include an early short of Wajda’s and period newsreels and historical matter, and a commentary by a film scholar on Ashes and Diamonds - if sold separately, these would all be premium releases, so they represent good value here.

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Ashes and Diamonds is billed as the best of the trilogy, and the lead performance by Zbigniew Cybulski is especially lauded. It is set on the night of the German surrender, May 8th, 1945, and the plot is roughly given in the Amazon editorial. In his interview Wajda explains that Cybulski insisted on wearing his own clothes during the film, and on dark glasses - his Maciek looks like a Godard protagonist or, as was the explicit influence, James Dean - initially Wajda resisted this, as he knew such a look was ludicrous historically, but he relented, and now analyses the appeal of the film in terms of Maciek being a figure the youth of the time (1958) could relate to - he was one of them. Interesting, for sure, but distancing too, and possibly a reason why Maciek’s fate evokes less emotion from a viewer than it might.

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There are many instances of overt symbolism in all these films. This can make for indelible images, such as the inverted splintered crucifix in Ashes and Diamonds, or the extended symbolism of the canals in the eponymous film - it can also force one to view the films as political statements, prising one out of a purely aesthetic appreciation - the director does not leave you free to choose how you approach these works.

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As Wajda points out, neither he nor his Polish contemporaries were free to make the films they wanted. Controversy marked the release of each film, and the Communist censors had to be placated. In this light, the implicit strong criticism of the Communist regime, and particularly of the Russian role in allowing the decimation of Warsaw and attendant crushing of the uprising there, is an incredibly brave act. Kanal can easily be read as saying that the Russian ‘liberation’ forced Poles ‘into the sewers’, to live in filth and stench, both literal and metaphorical; Ashes and Diamonds suggests that Polish identity was at best left confused, at worst outrightly betrayed, by the importation of Communism from Russia.

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So all this is an incredibly dense history lesson, laced with multiple ironies, and coded in sometimes arcane, sometimes condescendingly simple, symbolism. The history itself is bleak, and the circumstances in which the films were made ideologically compromised. It is hardly surprising that watching these films is taxing, and that admiration for the enterprise is ready, while love for the experience is less forthcoming.
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