Katyn

After Hungary’s Children of Glory and Estonia’s The Singing Revolution, comes another film that throws off the shackles of Soviet occupation to its own story in its own words. In 1940, 12,000 Polish officers were murdered by the Red Army in the forest of Katyn – a massacre that the Kremlin later tried to blame on the Nazis. It was a seminal event in Polish history – a tragedy set against the greater betrayal of the country at Potsdam, when the allies handed it over to the Soviets. The pain and injustice of this experience lingers in every frame, as a wife, Anna (Maja Ostaszewska), waits years for news of her husband as a cynical game of politics unfolds around her. Never knowingly understated, Wajda employs a full range of sweeping shots and orchestral cues to ramp up the emotion, although he’s often guilty of sacrificing the intimacy of character for the grander narrative of history. But this remains a brutal story (interestingly, one absent of Jews) that builds to a heart-pounding climax.

Matt Bochenski