Man of Marble

Ironic, tongue-in-cheek, smart and a tad too long, "Man of Marble" is a good movie that can't help being a little bit too much in love with itself, on top of being unable to know where to stop, thus ending being a little bit repetitive.

Agnieszka, a university student doing her diploma film, decides to investigate in the past of long forgotten hero of the people Birkut. Her search brings her to discover a lot about a man that was put in a pedestal to then be forgotten and erased from the history of the nation.

Wajda does not use a lot of subtlety in this film, but who needs it when the script is smart enough, the direction top notch, with some great shots and a pace that is sometimes close to an action movie, and there is really good acting (in particular our hero, Agnieszka, played with a lot of sass and confidence by Krystyna Janda). The score and the use of locations is also great.

However, the movie clocks at over two hours and a half, and the ideas behind the movie: the use of unknown people by the ones in power as little more than toys, destroying lives and dreams without a second of remorse, the difficulty to fight the system or the way paranoia extends everywhere in some regimes become undone by repetition and by a story that starts to spin on its wheels around the 1 hour and a half mark.

It is totally worth checking though. Just be sure to have enough time (you may want to have some breaks).