Man of Iron [1981]

 Andrzej Wajda stumbled upon the idea for Man of Iron – the remarkable sequel to Man of Marble, thus concluding his ‘Solidarity Films’ diptych – when a worker at the Lenin Gdańsk Shipyard, the birthplace of the Polish ‘Solidarity’ trade union movement in 1980, asked him to make a film about them. Leveraging a brief thaw in censorships – it would subsequently be banned and forced the filmmaker into exile – Wajda painted a simultaneously vivid, thrilling and solemn picture of the movement’s genesis through the life of Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), the son of the previous film’s protagonist Birkut (Radziwiłowicz). Modelled on Lech Wałęsa, Tomczyk was a former student activist and a worker at the shipyard who – upon his father’s death during the December 1970 protests and his dismissal from the job later – plays a leading role in the 1980 shipyard strike that founded the Solidarity movement. Like Birkut, his story of his life is also constructed through multiple perspectives – in particular, his old college friend (Bogusław Linda), and Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda), who left filmmaking for political activism upon marrying Tomczyk – but this time by Winkel (Marian Opania), a once radical radio journalist who’s now an alcoholic and a lackey for the authorities. He’s ordered to dig out compromising information about the firebrand leader, for slandering his reputation, but starts regaining his lost dissidence as he learns more about the man’s defiant political journey. Rippling with apitprop, insolence, vitality and a throbbing zeitgeist, the gripping political mosaic unfolded through alternations of a framing narrative, multiple flashbacks and archival footage, and comprised of two haunting protest songs, viz. the elegiac unofficial anthem of the striking workers and a furious ballad performed by Janda herself.

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Docu Drama/Film a Clef

Language: Polish

Country: Poland

Man of Marble [1977]

 Man of Marble – the first chapter in Andrzej Wajda’s electrifying diptych of ‘Solidarity Films’ along with Man of Iron – was a dazzling assemblage of political critique, formal audacity, and deconstructive meta-narration, making it both a vivid historical document and thrilling investigative reportage. Both films recalled Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and Francesco Rosi’s Mattei Affair in that they constructed their eponymous individuals’ lives through subjective memories and objective evidences. The individual in question here is Birkut (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), a simple bricklayer who shot to stardom as a Stakhanovite symbol upon accomplishing a superlative feat of labour during the Stalinist era, but over the years fell out of political favour, became a persona non grata, and slipped into obscurity. Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda), a brash young film school student, has defiantly selected this enigmatic man for her graduation project, and goes about making that by interviewing people who knew him in the past – a festival-hopping director who’d once made state propaganda films on Birkut; a former state security agent who tailed Birkut when he became increasingly outspoken and disillusioned; his oldest comrade (Michał Tarkowski) who was arrested during the purges and has become a dodgy bureaucrat post his rehabilitation; and Birkut’s estranged, self-hating wife – as well as archival news and film footage to piece together the jigsaw puzzle about this now forgotten socialist hero of unknown whereabouts. Flamboyantly shot through a mix of wide-angles, low-angles, close-ups, dynamic hand-held cameras and vivid colours, which complemented the wan backdrops and flat B/W reels, and accompanied by a pulsating, idiosyncratic score interspersed with old socialist songs, the film – aside from its stylistic bravura and edgy political commentaries – remains a fascinating depiction of subversive, guerilla filmmaking.

p.s. This is a revisit. My earlier review of this film can be found here.

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Genre: Drama/Political Drama/Film a Clef

Language: Polish

Country: Poland