This feature is dedicated to the memory of Armando Medardo Pintado Vitier
May 9th has been an important day for Russians since World War II, the day Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945. Also known as Victory Day in Russia, this revered day is now being distorted by Vladimir Putin to galvanize support in his bid to take over Ukraine. This same date also provided confusing context in Poland in 1945 as members of the Polish Resistance watched the end of Nazi rule filter away into the rise of Communism. Ashes and Diamonds (1958), the third film in Andrzej Wajda’s War Trilogy, takes place on May 8, 1945, and although Germany has surrendered, his protagonists don’t have much to celebrate.
The film opens as Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), a young member of the Polish Resistance, rests near a small church on a beautiful spring day. Maciek has been tasked with assassinating a man named Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński), an incoming commissar who is a member of the Polish Workers’ Party. Working with Maciek are two other former Home Army members, Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) and the cowardly Drewnowski (Bogumił Kobiela). The trio ambush two men, killing them both. Maciek’s bullets even set one of his victims on fire, the first of many fire metaphors throughout the film. But the trio soon learns that they have killed the wrong men. Instead of Szczuka, Maciek has murdered two innocent factory workers. This misadventure sets off Wajda’s criticism of how Poland suffered under the Germans and will continue to suffer under the stern hand of the Communist Party.
Much of Poland was devastated during the war. Eighty-five percent of its capital, Warsaw, 85% was completely destroyed, turning the once vibrant city into a wasteland. Much of Wajda’s film echoes this notion as he shoots his film in hotels with water-stained ceilings, bombed-out buildings and churches reduced to rubble. It is hard to feel excited for the war to end when everything you know is reduced to ashes. As one character says to Maciek, “If we could only celebrate a Warsaw not in runs.” That doesn’t stop local officials from hosting a dinner to celebrate the war’s end. As the residents suffer, Szczuka and the higher-ups are still able to enjoy a feast.
Though Maciek is ready to leave the Resistance, he still needs to fulfill his mission and kill Szczuka. The young man stands out in his own way. Wearing sunglasses at all hours and slicked-back hair, Maciek looks less like a freedom fighter than James Dean. It makes sense since Cybulski was known as the Polish James Dean before his untimely death in 1967. Maciek looks like a man out of town in his modern style and he soon realizes that the people who have hired the hit on Szczuka are just as craven as his target. As he waits at the hotel to off Szczuka, he meets Krystyna (Ewa Krzyżewska), a young barmaid who stokes his passions, which he soon realizes are more important than politics.
After a tryst with Krystyna, Maciek imagines a future for himself where he is no longer fighting or killing. He dreams of education, of stability, of having a family. This melancholy daydream is dreadfully sad, especially since both Maciek and the audience know that he is on a suicide mission. In one of the film’s most striking scenes, Maciek and Andrzej set the alcohol aflame in a series of shot glasses, each one representing a member of their faction who had been killed. They are a dying breed. Maciek knows that his time is limited and that the future of Poland is uncertain. In a similar scene, Szczuka remembers friends of his who died during the Spanish Civil War. Wajda paints parallels to both men, but only one of them truly aches to step aside from Poland’s past and its suddenly dismal future.
Wajda feels the dilemma of post-war Poland and in Ashes and Diamonds, he advocates for neither the pre-war nobility that ran the country nor the Communist Party who picked up the reins once Germany surrendered. Maciek feels this pull, unlike any of his comrades or enemies, and he pays the price. In the haunting final image, Maciek lays bleeding out in a trash heap, curled into a fetal position and kicking his legs against impending death. That dream of a new life has eluded him but Wajda has placed Maciek, in his dying state, in the position of birth. Could he represent the birth of a new Poland, one that has arrived still-born? Where are the diamonds? They never materialize. It’s just fire, destruction and ash.
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