The immediate association for me, and this is mostly as a Yankee American dude, is as a structural deconstruction of a life as like Citizen Kane with the multiple perspectives filling us in on a life that may be a mystery.
But what if instead of a boy who inherited a fortune and thought it would be fun to run a newspaper, it was a Working-Class construction worker cum bricklayer in Poland, who nevertheless had some notoriety made about him in the 1950s via a News on the March that was 1000× more, well, pro-worker-Communist propo of a kind. But that was the *good* times in this man Mateusz Berkut's (complicated, compromised) life - once he's outside of that world, well...
Moreover, what if instead of one intrepid reporter working on the case of "Who *was* this man" it's a filmmaker with very few scruples, breaking-locks-to-film-Marble filmmaker character (hence the title) who finds that as she goes further and further into finding the figures who "knew" about Berkut. Some of the people can talk about him and have no problem because, hey, it was all on film, lady! For others, the film that's shot by this director can't leave the building. When she eventually meets Berkut's ex wife, that is where she has to find the line of what's appropriate and gets the camera and microphone out of the room.
On one level, Wajda is working through a sly auto-critique of media and what it means to have a camera or microphone or combination in a space when it is bulky and loud and the lights get in the way (and a Medium like film creating a vibe in the room). But it is also a rigorously involving drama about the personal and emotional and just psychcic toll of political oppression and a heightened state of The Government Knows Best (and one that worked steadily and ruthlessly in the shadows) and the more you look into something, the less you know.
It's an incredibly sharp film on multiple fronts; my first impulse is to say this is 1970s Kane by the director of, oh look, Ashes and Diamonds, so... Good! Or if Kane was a totally downtrodden and put-upon briefly hyped-up figurehead of Workers Resilience and heroism and as soon as his exploitation no longer served his masters well, and when he asked questions that were a little uncomfortable (like say when going to see an official with a friend and then friend while he's waiting is... no longer to be found, as happens from time to time in the 1950s I assume), he got into trouble. Lots of it.
And everything coming from sneering eyes and condescension from those with any smidgen of power. So, no, not much like Kane outside of the framing device, and even barely at that. It anything, this is probably closer to another Welles film, his adaptation of The Trial, also a scorching take on the lack of answers to questions being asked, only here there is no wild stylization to the filmmaking - at least very obviously on a Film Noir kind (there are still some a few notable long-takes but nowhere near the Trilogy of films from the 50s).
All of these reference points do little good to pinpoint what is so direct and powerful about Wajda's filmmaking, which is how no frills it appears to be, and that this is not a Wellesian cinema but a... Wajdanian(?) Unflinching yet never lacking in heart or a sense of "why is this so?" What I can also yell you if you do decide to seek this out (sadly it's not available readily on DVD currently in the US), there's a laser focused and deeply sympathetic turn from Radzilowic as this man who we see throughout this film as trying to do things that are expected of him, until it becomes too much and he cracks (throwing a fish at an official, after all).
I especially loved how we see him through two distinct lenses where sometimes we have straightforward dramatic scenes where we see him develop and change as a thinking and questioning and perplexed character, made early on to be one way with those bricks and... hell, it's not (spoiler even his name!) caught up in a Communist machine, and when he is on camera and made to talk or act a certain way (until he stops playing the game so to speak). Meanwhile, Janda as the doggedly determined filmmaker gives a very physical performance, lanky and always with limbs all about.
So for all of my previous associations and notes on "it's like this or that," it is it's own singular, fiercely thoughtful work, with a crushing ending, and one of the best films of 1977 (a helluva year).
But what if instead of a boy who inherited a fortune and thought it would be fun to run a newspaper, it was a Working-Class construction worker cum bricklayer in Poland, who nevertheless had some notoriety made about him in the 1950s via a News on the March that was 1000× more, well, pro-worker-Communist propo of a kind. But that was the *good* times in this man Mateusz Berkut's (complicated, compromised) life - once he's outside of that world, well...
Moreover, what if instead of one intrepid reporter working on the case of "Who *was* this man" it's a filmmaker with very few scruples, breaking-locks-to-film-Marble filmmaker character (hence the title) who finds that as she goes further and further into finding the figures who "knew" about Berkut. Some of the people can talk about him and have no problem because, hey, it was all on film, lady! For others, the film that's shot by this director can't leave the building. When she eventually meets Berkut's ex wife, that is where she has to find the line of what's appropriate and gets the camera and microphone out of the room.
On one level, Wajda is working through a sly auto-critique of media and what it means to have a camera or microphone or combination in a space when it is bulky and loud and the lights get in the way (and a Medium like film creating a vibe in the room). But it is also a rigorously involving drama about the personal and emotional and just psychcic toll of political oppression and a heightened state of The Government Knows Best (and one that worked steadily and ruthlessly in the shadows) and the more you look into something, the less you know.
It's an incredibly sharp film on multiple fronts; my first impulse is to say this is 1970s Kane by the director of, oh look, Ashes and Diamonds, so... Good! Or if Kane was a totally downtrodden and put-upon briefly hyped-up figurehead of Workers Resilience and heroism and as soon as his exploitation no longer served his masters well, and when he asked questions that were a little uncomfortable (like say when going to see an official with a friend and then friend while he's waiting is... no longer to be found, as happens from time to time in the 1950s I assume), he got into trouble. Lots of it.
And everything coming from sneering eyes and condescension from those with any smidgen of power. So, no, not much like Kane outside of the framing device, and even barely at that. It anything, this is probably closer to another Welles film, his adaptation of The Trial, also a scorching take on the lack of answers to questions being asked, only here there is no wild stylization to the filmmaking - at least very obviously on a Film Noir kind (there are still some a few notable long-takes but nowhere near the Trilogy of films from the 50s).
All of these reference points do little good to pinpoint what is so direct and powerful about Wajda's filmmaking, which is how no frills it appears to be, and that this is not a Wellesian cinema but a... Wajdanian(?) Unflinching yet never lacking in heart or a sense of "why is this so?" What I can also yell you if you do decide to seek this out (sadly it's not available readily on DVD currently in the US), there's a laser focused and deeply sympathetic turn from Radzilowic as this man who we see throughout this film as trying to do things that are expected of him, until it becomes too much and he cracks (throwing a fish at an official, after all).
I especially loved how we see him through two distinct lenses where sometimes we have straightforward dramatic scenes where we see him develop and change as a thinking and questioning and perplexed character, made early on to be one way with those bricks and... hell, it's not (spoiler even his name!) caught up in a Communist machine, and when he is on camera and made to talk or act a certain way (until he stops playing the game so to speak). Meanwhile, Janda as the doggedly determined filmmaker gives a very physical performance, lanky and always with limbs all about.
So for all of my previous associations and notes on "it's like this or that," it is it's own singular, fiercely thoughtful work, with a crushing ending, and one of the best films of 1977 (a helluva year).