Review: Katyn (15) *****
The massacre by Soviet troops of thousands of Polish army officers in the Katyn forest in the spring of 1940 remains one of the most heinous war crimes ever committed.
Andrzej Wajda's emotional and powerful re-telling of this terrible episode in the annals of World War Two comes partly due to his own proximity – his father was among the victims – but also via a simmering resentment over the propaganda games that led both the Soviets and the Nazis to make capital from it.
Yet Katyn is far from being a son's tribute to a lost father. Neither is it even vaguely autobiographical in tone. In fact, Wajda is careful to present the story through the eyes and experiences of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of the disappeared – women who cling forlornly to hope while all around them evidence piles up to the contrary.
At the heart of this dreadful portrait of collective suffering is the manner in which human beings – both living and dead – are viewed as pawns in a political game between two great evil empires. Among them is Maja Ostaszewska as the loyal wife of a captain who, upon the fall of Poland, is sent with his men on a transport out of the country by his Soviet captors. Years later she still awaits news of his fate, but clutches on to newspaper reports that list the names of Katyn victims while omitting her husband's. Her story is typical of many. Yet Wajda is careful to minutely examine the workings of both the Nazi propaganda machine and the Soviets as Moscow orchestrates a denial and cover up. Thus Katyn is less a story of the massacre itself (which is illustrated in stark, brutal fashion at the film's end) but of the human cost.
This is a film about the psychological cost of war, murder and separation.Powerful and heart-rending, Katyn is a masterpiece and proof positive that Wajda, aged 83, is still a filmmaker par excellence.
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