April 30, 2008 06:00PM EDT

Film Junkie Reports: Katyn Stays with Auds Long After Credits Roll

For me the most anticipated event of the entire Tribeca Film Festival was last night’s New York City premiere of Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn. The film has generated a tremendous amount of interest since its European release beginning in Warsaw last September 17, the anniversary of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, but it has not yet entered general release in the United States. Thanks, then, to the festival programmers for bringing it here; it was a thrill to be able to watch, and it is showing again Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

The film revolves around the story of the Katyn Forest massacre, which took place in western Russia in late 1940. All officers of the Polish army, as well as virtually all university graduates and intelligentsia, had been taken prisoner by the Russians soon after the invasion. Stalin himself gave the order for their mass execution, which took place over many days and involved a thorough and systematic operation to execute. After the Germans occupied the forest in 1943, they revealed the tragedy to the world, exploiting it for their own anti-Soviet propaganda. When the Russians returned after the end of the war, they pinned the blame back on the Nazis, saying the crime took place in 1943 rather than 1940; this was the only acceptable doctrine in communist Poland until 1989. Katyn the film is therefore equally interested in the massacre itself and in the subsequent cover up: how it simultaneously divided and cohered Polish society, how it affected the widows, the mothers, the daughters, the survivors, and indeed the entire nation.

To do this the film doesn’t follow any single protagonist exclusively, but jumps between many characters who each embody different aspects of Polish society. Among these there are some who are reminiscent of Wajda’s earlier films, specifically a young prospective art student who is killed in the streets for resisting the Soviet version of the story, as in Ashes and Diamonds (this parallel was also noticed by Anne Applebaum in her excellent Feb. 14 New York Review of Books article). There is even a retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone, complete with a placard for the original play on display, as one sister is imprisoned in a dungeon for attempting to place an accurate tombstone for her brother while another is spared by choosing to promote the official party line.

Wajda was 14 years old when Poland fell, and his father, a cavalry officer, was among the murdered. Katyn has therefore been with him all his life, and this shows in the film, particularly in its harrowing final minutes. The credits roll without music, and there was only a smattering of applause in the theater as many viewers were unwilling to break the silence. With no post-screening discussion, we filed out quietly, pondering what we had seen. Back in the lobby, the concessions stand and the oversized placards for Hollywood’s upcoming summer fare reminded us of the current state of popular cinema, but even as we go and enjoy these pictures, Katyn will stay with us and remind us what cinema can be.