Popiól i diament
Tags: bleak, historical, murder

Plot synopsis:
In an unnamed small Polish town on May 8, 1945, the day Germany officially surrendered, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) and Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski) are former Home Army soldiers, now cursed soldiers who have been assigned to assassinate the communist Commissar Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński), but fail in their first attempt to ambush him, killing two civilian cement plant workers instead. They are given a second chance in the town's leading hotel and banquet hall, Monopol.
Meanwhile, a grand fête is being organized at the hall for a newly appointed minor minister (and current town mayor) by his assistant, Drewnowski (Bogumił Kobiela). Drewnowski is in fact a double agent, present at the first attempt to kill Szczuka. Maciek manages to sweet talk himself into a room with the desk clerk, who is also a fellow Warsaw native. They sadly reminisce about such things as the older section of town and the chestnut trees which were lost when the Germans destroyed most of the city in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising. While Maciek and Andrzej bide their time to strike Szczuka, Maciek becomes infatuated with the hotel's barmaid, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyżewska).
Szczuka has recently returned from abroad (he served during the Spanish Civil War like many communists in the 1930s, and also spent time in the Soviet Union while the Germans occupied Poland), and is attempting to locate his son Marek. Szczuka's wife had died in a German concentration camp, and Marek had been staying with an aunt. Szczuka did not approve of the aunt's right-wing political views, and had written to her telling her to send his son Marek to live with other people he knew, apparently people whose political views were closer to Szczuka's own, but the aunt continued to raise Marek, who adopted her right-wing views and joined the Home Army (serving under an officer that Andrzej will replace later in the film). Szczuka goes to visit the aunt, who lives in the same town, to find out where is son is, but she says that he is already a grown man at 17 and that she does not know. Later that evening, Szczuka learns from the local security official that Marek has been captured by the Red Army and is being held in detention.
Maciek's crush on Krystyna grows as the hour he must assassinate Szczuka nears, while Drewnowski becomes giddy at the thought at what his boss' promotion will do for his own career. Drinking with a cynical reporter until he is quite drunk, Drewnowski barges into the banquet dinner. In short order he sprays the guests with a fire extinguisher, pulls the tablecloth (and everything on it) to the floor and finds himself out of a job.
After sleeping with Krystyna, Maciek goes for a walk with her and ends up in a bombed-out church. He tells her that he is thinking about changing some things in his life, and mentions the possibility of going to technical school. She finds an inscription on the wall, a poem by Cyprian Norwid:
So often, are you as a blazing torch with flames
of burning rags falling about you flaming,
you know not if flames bring freedom or death.
Consuming all that you must cherish
if ashes only will be left, and want Chaos and tempest
Or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond
The Morning Star of everlasting triumph.
Attempting to fix her broken heel, Maciek stumbles into a crypt where the bodies of the men he killed that morning are laid out awaiting burial. He escorts Krystyna back to the hotel, where she has to go back to work at the bar until it closes at 3:00 a.m., and then goes inside, where he runs into Andrzej. He tells Andrzej that he has fallen in love with Krystyna, and although he is not a coward, he cannot continue killing and hiding and wants to lead a normal life. Andrzej is not only his friend, but also his commanding officer in the Home Army, and reacts as such, suggesting that Maciek would be a deserter if he failed to carry out the order to kill Szczuka. Maciek is taken aback, but then decides he must carry out his orders. He begins to stalk Szczuka, and when Szczuka forgoes his car to walk to the detention area holding his son, Maciek takes advantage of the opportunity to shoot him. As Szczuka falls, fireworks celebrating the end of the war fill the sky.
The following morning, Maciek goes to the truck where Andrzej awaits. From concealment he watches as Drewnowski arrives thinking he will join them, but Andrzej is aware that Drewnowski is only doing it because he has no other choice. Andrzej throws him to the ground and drives off. When Drewnowski sees Maciek, he calls out to him. Maciek flees and runs into a patrol of Polish soldiers. He is shot and ends up dying in a trash heap.

Review: Set in the first days of Soviet occupation following World War II, the film examines the moral dilemmas of the protagonist, Maciek--a young rebel hit-man-- in following through with the assassination of a leading communist party member--Sczcuka--who will soon be empowered as a means of forming a puppet communist government in Poland.
The film is not limited to the perspective of the protagonist, and alternates between the moral dilemmas of each of the characters in fulfilling predetermined Soviet agendas in the formation of a communist Poland.
I would highly recommend some research into the political transitions of Poland in the years directly following WWI before viewing this film for the first time; this film was made for a particular audience who clearly understood certain cultural and historical references that a modern Western audience will inevitably miss (ie.
I would highly recommend this film for any class examining Eastern Europe or Soviet Russia (which is the context in which I was introduced to this film in particular), or to anyone who would like to better understand the complexity of Cold War politics from a perspective behind the Iron Curtain..
The main plot of the movie revolves around Maciek Chelmicki, a young idealist who fought against the Germans and then turned to fight against the Communists.
4. That sometimes it's not war that is hell, it's living through war and trying to live a normal life that is a lot harder (thank God I do not know if it is so)Wajda's movie doesn't give direct answers to any of these questions - each person may watch the movie from a different point of view and get to a totally different conclusion.
But even if you're not into psychological movies about war, or noir-movies (and Popiol i Diament is definitely a sort of a noir-movie) it's worth watching for just one scene - the burning vodka glasses at the bar - Cybulski at his best.And lastly - the motto of the movie (and of the book as well):"Will ash and chaos be left in the end, that follows a storm into abyss Or may a diamond be found in the ash, a dawn of an everlasting victory"Cyprian Kamil NorwidPS: I hope Mr Norwid will not turn in his grave at the quality of my translation but that part of a poem by CK Norwid sums up the movie really well..
(That business about Cybulski being "the Polish James Dean" is disregardable nonsense; like saying that Chopin was the Polish John Phillip Souza.)  Wajda's other films didn't seem so impressive, but "Ashes and Diamonds" was simply superb.
His personal journey speaks eloquently to the national trauma, and he's just the most prominent in a complex collection of transition figures, caught on the official last night of the war, now looking forward but not yet able to escape the ravages of war and the attendant moral and psychological confusion, not yet free of potential victimhood (like the mayor's assistant who on learning of his boss' promotion drinks excessively in celebration of his own presumed advancement, but in his disruptive drunkenness kills off what future he had).
At its most basic, Andrzej Wajda's "Popiol i diament" (called "Ashes and Diamonds" in English) may seem to be a look at where Poland would be going after WWII ended.
Through Maciek's acquaintances with communist leader Szczuka and barmaid Krzystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), a potentially explosive situation arises.If you know nothing about how the movie got made, this seems to be the whole purpose.
Wajda not only moved the focus to Maciek - and gave him sort of a James Dean look - but also stressed the scene where Maciek talks with the man who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Apparently, fighting like the man did is a Polish tradition.
Therefore, the film likely appeals to the Poles in almost every way; the perfect Polish movie, if you will.Although I've never seen any of Andrzej Wajda's other movies - hell, I'd never heard of him until the Academy Awards gave him an honorary Oscar - I staunchly recommend this one.
I won't spoil the end, but I'll note that blood on a white sheet looks a bit like Poland's flag (a nationalistic statement).All in all, a great movie.
"Ashes and Diamonds" (Polish, 1958): And, this is the third of Wajda's trilogy about WWII in Poland, or perhaps better stated, inside the Polish people.
Wajda is using his skills in emulation of Hollywood examples (for example, the tenebrous lighting reminiscent of fashionable noir movies and the deep focus honed by Orson Welles and Gregg Toland), but his story is genuinely about post-war Poland and is intensely personal and honest.
The post-war years were a difficult time for much of Eastern Europe, and ended with that region being plunged into dictatorship; so in many ways, it's surprising to see a film about that era (made under the communists) whose heroes are a pair of anti-communist assassins.
I have seen this film several times and often I asked myself how the director Andrzej Wajda was allowed to film something that clearly shows the corruption of the new governing bodies in post-war Poland.
The acting of already disappeared Zbigniew Cybulski as Maciek is really impressive and reminds me to some extent James Dean playing "Rebel without a Cause".
His enthusiasm for the task starts to weaken, when he meets a young girl and falls in love ....Mr. Wajda has artfully presented symbols of the ruined country and lost youth in the war.
The cinematography was fantastic!I liked the narrative structure also; however, I can understand one's confusion given the complex WWII political structure of Poland, the Communist, the Germans, etc.
Loved the fact that the main character -- deemed "the James Dean of Poland" -- after falling in love with the barmaid now wants to chance his mind and abandon the Polish Resistance.
Only he can't because of his pride, his conscience, his colleague's challenge, or his fate.Loved the film's use of symbols and images: (a) the cross and Christ figures; (b) heat, and flames, and fire, all components of ashes and diamonds; (c) flowers and violets, from the small girl at the start offering the violets to the icon/altar above the church door at the start to the violets of the Barmaid and even violets eventually thrown in the trash; (d) the main character's dark glasses which symbolize his obscured vision, or that of the Polish Resistance or the Communists?Love the musical score.
The "liberation" of Poland was just another invasion and occupation and the Resistance shifted targets from Nazis to Polish communists and in doing so went from heroes of Poland to criminals.The story follows Maciek, a young Resistance fighter.
His assignment is to assassinate a Polish Communist leader who is in town for a banquet to celebrate the end of the war and his subsequent promotion.
Even though the Party watchdogs made sure Maciek's ultimate fate was punctuated (in another overly expressionist scene), the Polish movie going public perceived the film as it was intended and Maciek was seen as the hero.
They were successful in stopping it from going to Cannes but a Party Minister relented and let it go to the Venice Film Festival, allowing it to be seen "out of competition." It won the Grand Prize anyway, Cybulski became the James Dean of Poland and the Party Minister was fired (at the very least).
In the late 1940's and early 1950's some of Poland's teenagers were involved in a life and death struggle against the Soviet and Communist Polish authorities.
these young people had been raised in the bloodshed of WWII and had learned to fight and die.The film shows the lost youth of Poland struggling to find a way to leave this vicious upbringing and return to a normality which they often didn't ever have.The film's hero wants to return to being a student and having romances and friends after years of fighting for the Polish underground (this is why he wears sunglasses, because his eyesight was damaged fighting in tunnels during the Warsaw Uprising), however he has a mission to kill a communist officer...The film is amazing, the imagery reflects the detruction and sorrow of this lost generation.
Although I have zero knowledge about the life and times the movie is based in - I must say it kept me engaged and some of the scenes were very well done.Always good to know what the greats like Scorsese et al watch and absorb whatever I can from such obscure world cinema classics..
The reason for my disappointment was because O felt the lead character was trying much too hard to be a Polish James Dean.
Even the final scene seems to me to be quite strange and almost comical.Having said that, the plot is great and Wajda does a great job capturing the atmosphere of confusion which must have existed in Poland on the last day of the war.
Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) and Andrzej are assigned to kill a local communist leader Szczuka.
Maciek is conflicted and falls for beautiful bartender Krystyna.Zbigniew Cybulski wearing the sunglasses has the flair of James Dean.
This is one of the greatest Polish movies ever made, and it's easy to see why, Andrzej Wajda fills the screen with amazing imagery, metaphors and yes, action to keep the viewer interested throughout the movie's running time.I find it amusing that Zbigniew Cybulski was at one point compared to James Dean.
"Ashes and Diamonds", the final segment of Andrzej Wajda's celebrated war trilogy("A Generation" and "Kanal" preceded it) explores the effects of world war II on Poland's disillusioned youth.
Wajda's unglorified vision of warfare and it's bitter aftermath, is informed with moral and historical ambiguity, leaving the viewer with several independent decisions to make.After a first viewing, "Ashes and Diamonds" is a story of violence and love, skillfully-plotted and compulsively told; a typical suspense thriller with it's perilous assignments and stylish black and white cinematography suggesting noir.
However, this film is a great example of how focusing on the lives of a few characters in a single twenty-four hour period can illuminate significant historical facts in the context of an intriguing story.The characters are representative of the factions existing in Poland on the day of the German surrender.
You have: Maciek, a resistance fighter who had opposed the Germans and was continuing the struggle against the communists; Szczuka, a Pole who embraced the communists and had become a party official; Drewnowski, whose sympathies were with the resistance, but who hedged his bets by playing on both sides; people sucking up to the new power structure for purely personal gain; and most folks, who were just trying to get by.Moral ambiguities abound, raising issues with no easy answers.
But despite the cinematic style that Mr. Scorsese so adores, one cannot ignore the reality of the time in which the film was made and the compromises director Andrzej Wajda was forced to make.Ashes and Diamonds was released in 1958 and the English translation version in 1962.
Poland of course was under the thumb of the Soviets and to give director Wadja the benefit of the doubt, he was in no position to make a film that was critical of the Communists who were ruling Poland at the time.
Thus, Szczuka, the Commissar who returns to Poland on VE day (May 8, 1945) and who is the subject of an assassination attempt by Home Army operatives at the beginning of the film, must be depicted as a wholly sympathetic figure who has the best interests of the Polish people at heart.
Szczuka is also a tragic figure, who, at the moment he's on his way to re-connect with his son (a captured Home Army sympathizer who was raised by an anti-Communist aunt), is unmercifully cut down by Maciek.What's missing here in this film is political context.
And of course, Maciek, the brooding loner (modeled on James Dean), falls in love with a bar girl, but ultimately can't run away, and goes through with the murder of the kindly apparatchik.Most of the plot revolves around a banquet given for the local mayor in a hotel.
In Andrzej Wajda's 'Ashes and Diamonds (1958),' a weary Home Army youth, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), faces an internal conflict between fighting political causes and living a normal life, not coincidentally the same dilemma facing the nation of Poland as the War came to a close.Wajda's film opens with an cold-blooded ambush, in which two concrete factory workers are needlessly gunned down in a case of mistaken identity.
However, despite the pro-Communist climate in which Wajda produced his film, he stops well short of demonising the "enemy" rebels, and, indeed, young Maciek is portrayed as the tragic victim of the story.
In fact, the film goes to some length to emphasise the parallels between Maciek and Communist leader Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzezynski), implying the needlessness of their conflict, and so the tragedy of their fatal opposition: both men fought valiantly against fascist dictatorships (the former in both Spain and Poland), and remember fondly the war comrades who died in pursuit of an ideal that, to both, should now be deemed realised.
Instead, Szczuka dies in Maciek's arms as Poland celebrates its liberation.Polish cinema reached its peak in the late 1950s, following the Khrushchev Thaw that saw an ease in Soviet censorship, and Andrzej Wajda was at the forefront of this cinematic New Wave.
Made in difficult times of hard state censorship it managed somehow to smuggle a picture of how complicated was the reality in Poland just after Second World War. Comparing to the book, the plot is a bit reduced, one important thread is discarded (of an advocate who returned from German camp, and he was outed by his time companion, Szczuka - communist activist targeted for assassination - as a former kapo).
Much of the acting was either wooden or in a state of suppressed hysteria.As a chronicle of Poland's shock at not being victorious after years of hell, this film deserves high marks for it's depiction of Poles making the best of a hollow celebration.
Still, this is not a propaganda movie; Wadja somehow managed to trick the censors into not seeing criticism against the way the Soviet Union betrayed the people who believe in its ideals.Actor Zbigniew Cybulski plays Maciek Chelmicki, a killer working for the communists, who receives orders to kill Szczuka, a Communist leader.
Its like any genuine work of art can be seen at different levels: here - and the gunman, and the detective and love story, and the human drama, amounting to tragedy, and this is the existential drama and thinking about the national character, the fate of Poland - all for striking deeper level translation.
The third in Director Andrej Wadja's war trilogy, Ashes and Diamonds is set in Poland on the last day of WW2.
The third in Director Andrej Wadja's war trilogy, Ashes and Diamonds is set in Poland on the last day of WW2.
Cybulski's Maciek is a worldly wise, vodka fuelled skirt chaser, (not a million miles away from his real life persona allegedly) and far from being made twisted and bitter by his war experiences, Cybulski plays the character as a man who laughs at the cruel joke of life that his been played on all of us and is determined to "have fun and not be swindled" even in the face of imminent annihilation.It was a conscious decision on Wadja and Cybulski's part that despite their story taking place in 1945, ASHES AND DIAMONDS' central character was going to be 'all out' 50's cool.
Cybulski's Maciek is a worldly wise, vodka fuelled skirt chaser, (not a million miles away from his real life persona allegedly) and far from being made twisted and bitter by his war experiences, Cybulski plays the character as a man who laughs at the cruel joke of life that his been played on all of us and is determined to "have fun and not be swindled" even in the face of imminent annihilation.It was a conscious decision on Wadja and Cybulski's part that despite their story taking place in 1945, ASHES AND DIAMONDS' central character was going to be 'all out' 50's cool.
He's been tasked with assassinating Polish politicians sympathetic to the local communist party, which is what Andrzej Wajda's "Ashes and Diamonds" finds Maciek doing when it opens.
The film ends with Maciek's own death, his blood stains forming the Polish flag, his body melting away into a field of garbage.Like many of Andrzej Wajda's films during this period, "Ashes and Diamonds" was a giant exercise in smuggling the artist's own political views past state censors.
After WW2, Stalin created a communist, Soviet allied Polish state, officially dubbed "The People's Republic of Poland".
And yet many of Wajda's films - though they tend to do this in a somewhat vague, elliptical way - are heavily critical of Polish politics and his local government's ties with the Soviet Union.
Some authors have speculated that Poland's love for rebel archetypes and resistance fighters – local characters mythologised during WW2 - blinded censors to the "Ashes and Diamonds'" overall point: idiots, we're killing ourselves for Uncle Stalin!8.5/10 – "Ashes and Diamonds" is customarily thought of as being the second film in Wajda's "War Trilogy".
Ashes And Diamonds is the strongest of Wajda's early films..
At the close of World War II, a Polish partisan who fought in the Resistance feels ambivalent about a new assignment: to assassinate a Communist Party boss considered too sympathetic to the Soviet Union.A dazzling performance by the charismatic Zbigniew Cybulski, who was briefly hailed as Europe's new James Dean, in a work that blends noir elements with the texture of a war film.
Ashes And Diamonds completed director Andrzej Wajda's war films trilogy, following A Generation (1954) and Kanal (1956).The title comes from a 19th Century poem by Cyprian Norwid and references the manner in which diamonds are formed from heat and pressure acting upon coal..
Basically young Resistance fighter Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski), on the last day of the Second World War, has been ordered to kill Communist district leader Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzezynski).