Review for Katyn

Introduction

On September 1st, 1939 the might of the Nazi regime invaded Poland under the pretence of Polish aggression. Poland's weak armed forces stood no chance, especially when just 16 days later, the Soviet Union declared that the Polish government was no longer in control of its country, therefore all diplomatic agreements were null and void, then proceeded to invade from the East on the same day. Polish inhabitants were therefore caught between either the German and Soviet forces.

The Polish forces bizarrely were under orders not to fire upon the advancing Soviet forces and therefore very quickly around 450,000 POW's were taken with a vast number of ordinary soldiers released virtually straight away. Of the 8,000 Officers and Warrant Officers still in captivity, almost all were housed at POW camps at Kozelsk and Starobelsk. They were joined by civilians who were deemed to be part of the Polish intelligensia, the rounding up of whom was a task made easy by the majority being Polish reserve officers.

This then, is the backdrop of one of the most shocking and controversial war crimes of World War II, which took place in the Katyn Forest in Poland in 1940…

The film begins in Eastern Poland where Anna (Maja Ostaszewska) finds her husband Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski) a prisoner along with a large number of Polish Officers. Anna sees the lax security and pleads with her husband to escape and go home with her and their daughter, but Andrzej is determined to remain loyal to oath as an officer and stay with his comrades. Very quickly the prisoners are loaded onto a train and transported to Kozelsk POW camp, where Andrzej starts to keep a diary of all those Officers transported out of the camp.

Anna finally manages to join her family in Krackow, only to find that her Professor father has been sent to a German concentration camp at Sachsenhausen as a result of the Nazi's closing down the University as a hotbed of anti-German ideals. Due to the German obsession with administration, Anna's mother one day receives a box of possessions for her husband; the Professor seemingly dying from an untreated heart condition. There is still no word on Andrzej though.

Then in April 1943, the Germans announce the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest and start to announce the names of those discovered. Anna is comforted by the fact that Andrzej's name is not announced, but many others aren't so lucky and have to cope with the news of the deaths of loved ones with no explanation or consolation.

Then in January, 1945 Krackow is liberated by the Red Army and this time it's the turn of the Communists to announce the discovery of the bodies in the Katyn Forest and blame the Germans for the massacre. After hostilities cease and Poland settles down to being a satellite of the Soviet Union, lines start to get a bit blurred as the official Polish line follows that of their Soviet masters. There are, however, a number of brave Polish nationals who refuse to follow the official line of events, keeping the truth alive - sometimes longer they can keep themselves alive.
And still the question remains for Anna and her daughter, just where is Andrzej?

Visual

Very nice transfer onto Blu-ray with some nice period details. One nice touch by director Andrzej Wajda is the inclusion at separate points of excerpts of both the German and Russian propaganda films of Katyn. Some of the shots are remarkably similar and it's a poignant reminder that this is all real when either appear on screen.

Audio

Only one soundtrack option and that's the native Polish, but there are optional English subtitles. My only problem is that I'm not quite convinced that they got the best translators in as occasionally the dialogue doesn't quite make sense if you're following the subtitles but not being fluent in Polish means I can't compare the translation to the original dialogue. It doesn't happen that often, so not a huge problem.

Extras

There are two extras on this release. The first is a standard Making Of but the second is an hour long interview with the director of the film Andrzej Wajda in which he talks at length of his motivations for completing this film and everything he went through in order to get it made. It's in Polish but well-subtitled.

Overall

Fascinating film of an event that I've been aware of for some time but not the background to it. Due to the Soviet refusal to acknowledge this atrocity, it has been hard to find anyone willing to talk about it or provide any real details. For nearly 60 years the victors rewrote the history books and blamed the Nazi's for this atrocity and based on their behaviours during that period, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that they might be responsible. Thank god for the ordinary Poles who knew better and resisted the official line to keep the truth alive, despite the fact that being a Soviet run country meant that speaking of these events in that context put them into grave danger.

The truth appears to be that Stalin had already recognised that after hostilities were ended, he wanted to keep the western part of Poland as Soviet territory and therefore in order to keep Poland as a whole in check he needed to weaken the armed forces and the intelligensia. His solution was simply to massacre the Officer class, something he had a track record of with purges of the Soviet Officer class as well as the Party between 1936 and 1938. He also found it rather convenient to blame the Germans as one of the victors of the war and the controlling power in Poland.

Director Wajda's vision was not only to create a film about the crime of the Katyn Massacre but also about the lie that was upheld by the Soviets and Polish authorities. In this he succeeds well, with the latter half of the film focussing on the families as they not only await news of their loved ones but also the aftermath as they also try to keep the truth alive. It must also be said that it is mainly the women who keep the history of their families as they clearly bore the brunt with the deaths of husbands, fathers and sons.

Katyn is a superb film about a tragic event that needs clear recognition of responsibility from those who perpertrated it…

Recommended.