It seems almost sacrilegious to be critical of a film that is based on genocide, but just because a film portrays an appalling historical episode does not mean it should automatically be lauded or acclaimed as this film appears to have been from it's cover notes. The film loosely follows several Polish officers caught up in the events, sometimes from their perspective and sometimes from the perspective of their families. Initially, the coverage of the genocide itself is from the perspective of relatives and thus arrives second or even third hand. The problem I felt was that the storyline flits between to many characters. We see some important episodes in their lives but very few of them are given any real depth. Two scenes involving the soldiers also jarred. An enormous prison barrack has bunk beds about ten berths high and is packed with thousands of soldiers and the temperature is well-below freezing. A visually iconic image. However it's also emotionless, the actors may as well be at a football match or just about to leave work. The second scene later showed the officers on a train. The narrative described them as twelve people crammed into spaces big enough for seven. Well to me they looked as though they were far more comfortable than if they had been travelling on the London underground at rush hour. It's a difficult subject and Wajda (whose own father was killed in the events) should have been the perfect director, but the massacre of 22,000 people deserves a more remarkable film depiction than is managed here.
