Talk:A Generation

Demonization of Home Army

This bit doesn't seem to be NPOV:

"This and the other two films of Wajda's wartime trilogy stand as a monument to the director's genius, but one must never forget that they sought on the one hand to conjure up a myth of a communist underground movement which never truly existed and on the other to demonize the popular and anti-communist Home Army."

I haven't seen this film but I have seen Ashes and Diamonds. I have the impression that that film if anything tried to potray the nationalist resistance as sympathictically as was possible given censorship - note GIVEN censorship. That the communists resistance was miniscule sounds about right tho.Dejvid 15:24, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suppose you are right, in that my characterization is slightly out of tune with the principles of NPOV. However, it is very difficult to be neutral or value free when discussing any work of art produced under a totalitarian system, especially under a Stalinist, or recently post-Stalinist regime.

What I mean is that the extremely fine shades of meaning and buried or double symbolism that is at the heart of many of the best films made under the Polish communist system do cut both ways, especially in the 50s. The authors were believing communists, or at the least semi-believing communists, and felt a powerful need to shed a positive light on the best that their principals had to offer. Yet at the same time nearly all of them were appalled at the actual behavior of the Stalinist regime of Boleslaw Bierut. Many of them worked both under this regime, and under the "more liberal" regime of Golmuka, where for a short time artists could get away with portraying a far more realistic and independent line in their work. They believed, and wanted their art to further a humane and positive communist system that permitted a far greater degree of liberty that existed at the time (or at any time in the history of the People's Republic, before or up to 1989). But they put their skepticism of the existing party and regime into their work, as well.

In "A Generation," Wajda was officially making a Socialist Realist work of art, which was suffuce with far more propagandistic tendencies than any of his later work. The political goals of furthering the party's campaigns against any nostalgic for the right wing resistance during the war and constructing a myth of the communist underground were front and center in that film, above any personal artistic vision (and it is a tribute to Wajda's skill that his vision still comes through the propagana).

"Ashes and Diamonds" was made in 1956, in the heady days just following the fall of Bierut and Krushchev's Secret Speach to the 20th Party Congress. Suddenly artists could feel a loosening of control, and seized the moment to create works that came much closer to portraying historical reality and a personal artistic vision, rather than the party line. But they still believed, and still hoped to create a humane communist system, one that was in opposition to what certain elements of the right stood for in its resistance to the communists. Your perception of "Ashes and Diamonds" as much more sympathetic to the Home Army's actions and ideals is entirely correct - but don't forget, Maciek dies in a field with waste paper blowing over his corpse. In the novel, Andrzejewski is far less subtle - Maciek dies on a pile of garbage, naturally the "dustbin of history," a phrase you doubtlessly know the communists were very fond of. Here Wajda is portraying the practical and ideological failure of the Home Army and the right in the aftermath of the war, unable to offer an attractive or functional strategy for reorganizing the country besides violent, armed resistance to the Russians and their domestic Polish stooges.

Wajda fought with the Home Army and believed ferverently in Polish independence. He was also (at that time) a communist who truly wanted to see socialism triumph, over the worse tendencies of the Polish right as well as the totalitarian urges of the party and the men running the country at the behest of the Soviets. It didn't take him long to loose any of his communist idealism, and when you watch "Man of Marble" you can see how far he came to hate the principals and actions of the party. Benzamin 10:00, 20 Apr 2005 (EST)

I was actually beginning to think that I ought to retract the NPOV bit but I'm glad that you saw beyond that to the point I was trying to make. I have seen Man of Marble and indeed Man of Steel which is why I was questioning whether something more nuaced would not be in order. Thanks for replying. I've learnt something whether or not you decide to make changesDejvid 18:07, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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