The Warsaw Rising Photobombed

        

I’ll say this for Warsaw 44, it has a whole new angle to offer on the horrors of war. Take the main hero Stefan. He sees his city flattened, his close friends die, he gets shot, witnesses the murder of his mother and brother, and then is on the receiving end of a 250kg bomb from a Stuka. As you can imagine this treatment leaves our boy with an extreme case of the 1000 yard stare and a little unsteady on his feet. But just when you think that fate has done its worse, along comes the love of his life, Ala, who promptly starts to scream and slap 7 bells of hell out of him.

If he looked a little dazed from the Stuka, the effect of Ala is to leave him largely comatose for the rest of the Rising and probably remainder of his life. You get the idea that if the Nazis had had a couple of Alas on board we might all be wearing Lederhosen and singing the Horst Wessel.

It’s a very funny scene and I’m always grateful for a laugh, but it’s not quite what I expected from a film about a mass slaughter known to history as the Warsaw Rising of 1944.

To be fair to the director, Jan Komasa, hysterical screaming is something of a staple of Polish TV and cinema. This is strange because there is no more restrained and civilized people on earth than the Poles. I say this as an arrogant and generally offensive arse who has tried and failed to annoy Poles for the past decade or two. But whereas Poles are wonderfully sedate in real life, it’s received wisdom among their film fraternity that deep emotion can only be portrayed by screaming and tantrums.

In fact later in the film Stefan gives the same treatment to his other love interest, Kama, who’s just taken a direct hit from a Panther tank.  Although she’s holding up surprisingly well considering the 88mm armour-piercing shell that has just disemboweled her, it must be said that’s she’s in something of a delicate state and not really in the mood for exhortations to “Get up!” Perhaps mercifully Kama’s sufferings at the hands of Stefan are cut short by the depredations of the Panther.

Another problem is that Warsaw 44 was made by a great Polish director. Amazingly, Jan Komasa, who wrote the screenplay as well, is just 33 and clearly has a bright future ahead of him. That’s a problem though because inside every great Polish film director there’s an auteur desperately trying to get out. Making a good film is all very well for these guys but a little beneath them. What they really want to do is make art.

Warsaw 44 has the makings of a great film. The cast and its young stars are excellent and the sets and special effects transport you back to the reality of 1944. There are also many understated and very touching scenes as well as many very true and shocking scenes about the cruelty and horror of war. And for 20 minutes at a time the skill of this great director immerses you into the truly gripping story of the Warsaw Rising. Then his alter ego clearly gets bored with holding a mirror up to nature and elbows his way into the film to make a statement.

One particularly hilarious one comes about half an hour in when Stefan pushes Ala out of the way of a German sniper. He very sensibly tells her that they’ll run to safety when their comrades start firing. Then when the bullets start to fly and they are crossing the line of fire, they stop in a dramatic blaze of light to share a lingering kiss while bullets very prettily buzz by their heads.

You can see what Komasa wants to say, and that’s just the problem. His clunking statement about love and the pretty scenography may be a triumph of art but whether you admire it or not you’ve just been dragged bodily from August 1944 and the spell of make believe has been broken.

Then you struggle back into the film only to get photo bombed again 20 minutes later by the mad auteur who just simply has to share another profound artistic insight with you.

Another such scene happens when the delectable Kama gets eviscerated by the Panther. We get to watch for fully 15 seconds of screen time as the lumbering behemoth ponderously brings its main armament to bear on Kama. Why doesn’t she run to the other side of Warsaw in that time? There are several possibilities, but none of them make any sense to anyone other than an art poseur.

So Warsaw 44 is a flawed masterpiece. Flawed because the director was trying to make a masterpiece. But that said, if you like the occasional laugh in a film about tragic reality then Warsaw 44 is for you.