Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn has had its U.K. premiere at the British Film Institute in London. The event was one of the highlights of the 6th Polish Film Festival which this year has a brand-new look and name – Kinoteka.
Michal Kubicki looks at the reactions to the film.
This is of course not the kind of film after which a tumultuous applause is appropriate. The London premiere was no exception: after some very brief and restrained clapping there was a long silence. Later on, in the conversations between members of the audience which included many film critics, historians and actors, one could hear descriptions such as ‘powerful’, ‘well-done’ and ‘superbly acted’. Many people stressed that the film about the 1940 massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest was a very personal film as his father, captain Jakub Wajda, was among the victims. Jan Ciechanowski, a prominent Polish historian living in London, was impressed by Wajda’s Katyn.
‘It makes a very strong impression. Wajda always makes the sort of Baroque type of films and obviously it makes a very strong impression. It is a great film and I don’t think anyone else but Wajda would be able to make such a film. What strikes me is that he was making a film about his father and mother in a sense, trying to show the way this massacre affected the relatives of the people who were killed.’
82 year-old Wajda has made over forty features in his long career, many of them probing into the key episodes in Polish history and some of them universally hailed as masterpieces. According to Michael Brooke of Sight and Sound, Katyn is an important film but not a masterpiece.
‘My reaction to the film is that it’s good but not great. Of ocurse Wajda has made several great films. I don’t think there’s any comprehension problem for foreign audience. Mt y main problem with it is probably unavoidable. Most of Wajda’s great films are great because they are ambiguous and suggestive whereas in this case it seems he wanted to be as accurate about the history of the Katyn massacre as possible, and so the ambiguity of his earlier films simply is not there. On the other hand when it’s good it’s very good indeed. I thought the final set piece was overwhelming.’
Since its release last September, Wajda’s Katyn has attracted over three million viewers in Poland. Its international premiere took at the Berlin Festival in February has been followed by the screenings in Dublin, Miami, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Moscow, Istanbul and Washington. How successful can the film be with foreign audiences? According to Jan Ciechanowski, some aspects of the film make it a difficult proposition.
‘On of the one hand Wajda tries to show that the Germans were persecuting the Poles and Russians. This would be quite understandable but then when he’s trying to introduce the themes dealing with the immediate effects of Russian occupation in 1945, also the reactions of these various people towards Katyn, that some were trying to use self-censorship to erase this massacre from their thoughts, this possibly could be slightly confusing. But it’s a good thing that the film is being shown in various capitals, including Moscow.’
The British premiere of Katyn opened a month-long retrospective of Andrzej Wajda’s output at the British Film Institute.