User Reviews

When I saw this film, I was very shocked at how subversive the content was. While it was filmed in Poland during the Soviet-dominated era, the film focused on a fictional character's rise and fall in local government. Mateusz Birkut is an ordinary Polish bricklayer working on a massive government project. A film maker decides to stage a propaganda stunt to see if a new record for speed bricklaying could be set. Birkut agrees to give it a try along with his crew. Not only did they meet their goal but they exceeded it--and it was all captured on film to be shown to the masses. Overnight, Birkut becomes a minor celebrity and he is given a nice job working for local government. And, for some reason, over the years his name is just about completely forgotten.

Now, over 20 years later, a young film maker has stumbled upon Birkut's name and some of the newsreel footage but she is really curious how he went from hero to nobody so quickly. She spends most of the film reviewing old film clips and tracking down those who knew Birkut to find out WHY. However, repeatedly she is told to mind her own business and lots of roadblocks are thrown in her path. Finally, after exhaustive work and putting herself out on a limb politically, she finds out how the repressive government worked during the Stalin years--taking a hero and eventually jailing him as a political prisoner and then erasing memories of his existence. Repeatedly, she is warned to let the matter drop, as even in the post-Stalin era it wasn't exactly a free country. How this very critical film ever got made it beyond me but it's wonderfully made and captivating.

The usual comparison- and inspiration- is with Citizen Kane, but there are important differences. One is that the hero here really is a citizen- a comrade in his own eyes- and the other is the difference in the person trying to learn about him. The reporter in Citizen Kane is an experienced hack who is indifferent except to the front page; Agnieska is at the start of her possible career, making her graduation film, the one which will make her name and determine her future and looking for a story that matters in itself; indeed, Agnieska's story is as important to the film as Birkut's and in some ways her story reflects his. She works as determinedly as any Stakhanovite and the way she binds her helpers- the film crew, archivists, people who knew Birkut- to her in her task and to think it worth doing for themselves means that she creates a shock-force as real as and more effective than Birkut's display team of brickies. Again, the characters we meet who knew Birkut all have a relationship with Poland as well as Birkut and their own careers- building-worker to political prisoner to industrialist; chekist to strip-club manager; propaganda film-director to...film-director; gymnast to drunkard- reflect the changes as they- and communist Poland- age. There's hope- the old cameraman blasted into admiration and respect for Agnieska when she shows she'll do his job for him. Indeed, Agnieska is a wonderful character, her long limbs wrapped round her, carrying "everything I possess" round everywhere, smoking cigarettes avidly, demanding "wide screen, like an American movie"- you can see why the Party and her superiors want her to succeed and why they fear her. Not only that, but the film is fair to Communist Poland- we see Agnieska's home and realise that it is because of the opportunities given by communism that she can leave the boundaries imposed on her railway-worker father, just as Birkut only achieves fame as a worker in a supposedly workers' state. It is because both of them take rhetoric seriously that they are finally unsuccessful. After all, we never do know who sabotaged the bricks and burned Birkut's hands, and it doesn't really matter in a state where rhetoric is what counts.

In my recent reviews of the Defa films about the life of Karl Liebknecht I pointed out, that the textbook Bolshevist character is revolutionary and self-sacrificing, willing to exploit itself for the benefit of society. It chanced that I have just seen the Polish film Man of Marble, which elaborates on just this subject. Hence I enjoyed the film, even though the message in the narrative is rather vague. The story plays in the late seventies. The leading thread is a film project, that is meant to finish the studies of Agnieszka, one of the main characters. She decides to make a commentary on the former lead worker Mateusz Birkut, who rose to extreme popularity in the fifties. Then in the aftermath of Stalinism he was discredited and put in prison, apparently simply because he became a bit of a nuisance - like so many others. Agnieszkas project is not welcomed by the authorities, because it reopens old wounds. However, they do provide her with the means to start the project (a camera crew of three people). As the story unfolds, Agnieszka turns out to be a typical news-hawk: intrusive, chasing "great material", without much respect for other peoples feelings. In a chain of interviews the old companions tell about their part in Birkuts career. I don't know if it is intended, but my sympathy went mainly to those characters, people who were less fortunate than Birkut, and nonetheless managed to do something useful with their lives. Birkut starts as a brick layer. He participates in a propaganda project, that aims to boost productivity in building. It uses the division of labor, and the mechanic motion, that in the west is called Taylorism. Birkut is launched as a celebrity, a working class hero, and enjoys all the privileges. Many former colleagues get a dislike for him, since he pushes up their norms. At the same time, the authorities get tired of Birkuts mediation for fellow workers,and try to put him on the sidelines. Birkut ignores the warning signals, and is eventually convicted and imprisoned for four years. In the post-Stalin era he is rehabilitated, but due to his embitterment he remains an outcast. After all these years Agnieszka is unable to track him down, but she finds his son Maciej Tomczyk (Birkut never really married, and later abandoned his girlfriend). Maciej tells that Birkut has passed away. In the sequel Man of Iron we learn that he was actually shot during a workers' upsurge. As said above, the film message is mixed. Birkut is not a man of high morals, but a victim of the system. The increase of labor productivity is a common goal in all economies, no matter what their ideologies may be. In capitalism the driving force is extra pay, or in times of large unemployment the competition between the workers. In the Bolshevist states the workers were supposed to voluntarily exploit themselves. Solshenitsyn once told a story, that just after the revolution the propaganda drove some simple minds to actually work themselves to death. Later productivity was stimulated by giving social rewards for excellent achievements (the famous surpassing of the planned task), in the form of marks of honor (often to a collective or enterprise). Workers ethics in Japan have also been mentally unhealthy. You need trade unions to provide for a counterbalance, and this is in fact the subject of the sequel film Man of Iron. In my opinion the film is not anti-Bolshevist - and it was financed by the state. It just calls for better balances in the social power distribution within the system. Probably there are lots of hidden meanings in the film. For instance, Birkut burns his fingers, after "subversive elements" have heated one of his bricks, which is quite funny. From then on Birkut wears gloves. And a fellow worker of Birkut enters the office of a party bureaucrat and never returns, even though there is no other exit. The legs of Agnieszka move in all directions (you will not see this behavior with for instance Julia Roberts). This category of social films is just my cup of tea, so if you like the type I suggest that you read my other reviews.

I found this Polish film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, alongside its followup Man of Iron which came five years later, and which I almost watched first, this original definitely sounded interesting, from director Andrzej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds). Basically young filmmaker Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) is making her diploma film, she decides to focus it on the 1950s, the Stakhanovite movement, and the man who became a symbol of an over-achieving worker, in Nowa Huta, heroic Polish bricklayer Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz). From stock footage, including outtakes and censored footage, in the archives, interviews with some people who knew the propagandist, including his ex-wife, his friends the filmmaker who helped him become a hero to the people, and the marble statue of the man found beneath ground, she chronicles Birkut's life. We see the life of Birkut in flashbacks, including his early beginnings, his fall from grace, and his rise to become a hero during the workers' revolution to the people with his multiple brick laying in building housing, but no-one knows what has happened to him. But Agnieszka's hard-driving style and content for her film are causing concern for the authorities and unnerving her supervisor, they think the student is digging in too deep to recent history, the supervisor kills the project, claiming it is over budget her footage and equipment are confiscated. Agnieszka's father suggests there is a single specific reason the authorities do not want the film to be completed and released, so following her seeing more footage found and the advice, she takes some equipment and goes to find Birkut for herself and ask him questions, even if she is not involved in the making of the film, in the end she does find Birkut's son Maciej Tomczyk (also Radziwilowicz) in the Gdańsk Shipyard, he tells her that his father died years ago. Also starring Tadeusz Lomnicki as Jerzy Burski, Jacek Lomnicki as Young Burski and Michal Tarkowski as Wincenty Witek. I am not sure I know fully why this film was withheld for four years, but it works as both a pseudo-documentary and a thriller of sorts, with a filmmaker going into places she shouldn't go, and seeing the origins of the man she is trying to find out about, I admit there were some slow spots, but all together it is an interesting drama. Very good!

Let's start with the "Stakhanovite movement", a concept foreign to most Americans/Westerners (myself even after seeing the film 3x). Next, realize that there was an actual bricklayer in Nowa Huta who was celebrated for his bricklaying expertise in the communist cult that celebrated the creation of Nowa Huta. How accurately Wajda's character resembles the real-life one is seemingly-irrelevant to Wajda's plot. As a film about a young, naive, first-filmmaker under strict Communist censorship: One has to wonder how much the plot is covertly autobiographical (regarding Wajda's own career?) As a first-generation, American, Roman Catholic of Polish ancestry, I recognize Wajda's personal alienation from my own, detached Polish culture. Only the single sign-of-the-Cross made by Mateusz, and the strict denial of marriage banns to his underage bride (by Church clergy sanction) lend any hint towards the nature of Mateusz's Catholic-character-qualities. His honesty, his sincerity, his simplicity, his fidelity to friends and neighbors, his patriotism while living under the yoke of tyrannical, atheistic rule--all attest to the values of Catholicism part of traditional Polish culture! Absent my own experience, I would never glean these facts from Wajda's script or characterizations. Of key-central historical note: As a socialist, planned utopian city amongst a strongly-Roman-Catholic culture: Nowa Huta lacked any Catholic Churches! The element of support for the post-war-reconstruction of Poland by Catholic heirarchy is totally absent in Wajda's script, but not in the actual history he attempts to portray in this film! While Wajda prominently depicts workers' party politics throughout the Film, one has only to study the subsequent growth of the Solidarity movement to realize the sterile view of Polish Catholic culture Wajda depicts for his audience! Again: One has to question if this glaring/blatant omission was an arranged 'condition' of Wajda's 'artistic license' granted to him conditionally in scripting this 'historical-depiction-of-sorts'? (Surely: No filmmaker under Communist rule would be granted carte blanche freedom to depict characters, plots, family values, cultural practices relating to a State-suppressed, major religious practices!) While Mateusz is depicted with idealistic Stakhanovite qualities, the 'real bricklayer' behind his character would seem to have been motivated by Polish Roman Catholic social values pertaining towards the common good--qualities Communism desires to 'adapt'/'borrow'/'steal'/'emulate' for bolstering its own lackluster rewards towards individual initiative! ('Forget!' any mention of 'eternal rewards' or acts of charity stemming from Christian zeal!)