Katyn (2007)

An examination of the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and citizens in the Katyn forest in 1940.

Director:

Andrzej Wajda

Writers:

Andrzej Mularczyk (story), Przemyslaw Nowakowski,

Stars:

Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 14 wins & 11 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Andrzej Chyra	...	Lt. Jerzy
Maja Ostaszewska	...	Anna
Artur Zmijewski	...	Andrzej
Danuta Stenka	...	Róza
Jan Englert	...	General
Magdalena Cielecka	...	Agnieszka
Agnieszka Glinska	...	Irena
Pawel Malaszynski	...	Lt. Piotr
Maja Komorowska	...	Andrzej's Mother
Wladyslaw Kowalski	...	Professor Jan
Antoni Pawlicki	...	Tadeusz
Agnieszka Kawiorska	...	Ewa
Sergey Garmash	...	Maj. Popov
Joachim Paul Assböck	...	Obersturmbannführer Brunon Müller (as Joachim Assböck)
Waldemar Barwinski	...	Polish Officer

Storyline

On 17 September 1939, a group of Polish officers and soldiers are imprisoned by the Soviet Army on the border of Poland. Anna and her daughter Nika travel from Krakow to meet her husband and officer Andrzej and they try to convince him to leave the soldiers and escape back home. However, Andrzej refuses to leave the troop and is deported to USSR. Later the Soviet tells that the Polish officers had been massacred by the Germans in the Katyn Forest with a shot on the back of the neck. However Anna retrieves Andrzej's diary and discloses that the soldiers had been actually murdered by the Soviet Army.

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Plot Keywords:

officer | katyn | forest | katyn forest | cover up | 

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Genres:

Drama | History | War

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

Poland

Language:

Polish Russian German

Release Date:

21 September 2007 (Poland)

Also Known As:

Das Massaker von Katyn

Filming Locations:

11 Listopada, Praga Pólnoc, Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland

Box Office

Budget:

PLN 15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£25,118 (UK) (19 June 2009)

Gross:

£25,118 (UK) (19 June 2009)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Akson Studio, TVP S.A., Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min 118 min 118 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital EX

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The director's father was killed in this massacre. Andrzej Wajda was only 13 years old then. His father's remains were never found.

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Goofs

(1h 24min in): When Tadeusz tears down the poster, we can see that he rips most of it from the wall. In the next scene when soldiers come, there is a close-up of a soldier holding the pieces of the poster that are much larger than those left by Tadeusz.

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Connections

Referenced in Pozner: Ezhi Artur Bar (2010)

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Soundtracks

"Symphony No. 4, Part 1 - Adagio"
Written by Krzysztof Penderecki
Performed by Polish State Philharmonic Orchestra

User Reviews

Worth the Pain You May Feel

I watched "Katyn" on a home computer screen. Even in that limited format, "Katyn" had an impact on me comparable to such cinematic greats as "Lawrence of Arabia." I cried throughout most of the film. I resolved that many of my relationships would be different. I remembered people I had known who reminded me of characters in the movie. After the film ended, I felt that I could not listen to the radio or read the newspaper or listen to anyone speak. I just needed to allow the film to sink into me.

Naysayers have critiqued "Katyn" as boring and dull. If you need a film to depict war, occupation, and atrocity as shiny, compact, and compelling as a sports car, then you should listen to those naysayers; don't watch "Katyn," rather, watch the very silly, teen fanboy-friendly Quentin Tarantino flic, "Inglorious Bastards." If you've seen enough Hollywood productions jam-packed with sexy Nazis and happy endings, and you want to take in a film that dares to depict, in eyeblinks, what war, atrocity, and occupation looked like and felt like to real people, then by all means see "Katyn." One of the many features that I admired: "Katyn"'s Nazis are not sexy. They are not Tom Cruise, Liam Neeson, Christoph Waltz. "Katyn"'s Nazis are brutal, repugnant thugs.

I respect this movie. There are too few movies about which I'd say that. It shows the courage not to attempt to weave an uplifting, feel-good atrocity narrative that leaves the viewer with a smile. This isn't "Schindler's List." "Schindler's List" is a very good movie, but this isn't that. It is, rather, very much like what World War Two and the subsequent Soviet occupation sounded like to me when I listened to my own older friends and relatives, who lived through both. This is disjointed narrative, stories that seem headed for redemption or even ecstasy but that end in random death, that end in aborted normalcy, aborted joy, aborted meaning. I felt, in watching these cold, pale, stoic characters, as if I were, once again, sitting across the table from older Eastern European friends and relatives. Yes, that's what they looked like. Yes, those are the facial expressions they assumed when they talked about the uncle who was rounded up and never heard from again, the daring, handsome lad who ended up in a mass grave – or when they pointedly did *not* talk about these people. The gravestone whose inscription dares to tell the truth; the tearing down of a propaganda poster; the Red Army soldier who struggles to do the right thing by a widow, who won't yet admit that she is a widow; the singing of exactly the right Christmas carol at exactly the right moment: those are exactly the heroic gestures that no one ever saw, that went unrecorded, that only one person lived to tell about, to tell me. Here they are, on screen.

When a movie is named "Katyn" the viewer knows how it will end; it's kind of like a movie named "Auschwitz" or "Kolyma" or "Wounded Knee." There isn't going to be a surprise ending. I was still surprised by the ending, by how courageous and moving I found it. Once again, Andrzej Wajda managed to wow the film-goer in me. And he managed to move the human in me.

See "Katyn." See a movie you can respect, a movie that is worth your time.