Remembering Andrzej Wajda - filmmaker who showed Poland the bitter truth
Andrzej Wajda, Poland’s most well-known filmmaker who passed away on October 9, brought to life the tugs and pulls of paradoxical identities at work in his own country with a rare acuity. Through the lens of his camera, he saw the land of his dreams besmirched and forgotten.
In his various incarnations, he ripped the cover off the venal undercurrents that underlay the collective consciousness of an entire nation and its people. His acute understanding of identity politics in his very own beloved Poland always managed to draw the best out of him.
And why not? He had himself been through the vicissitudes of a country’s political turbulence, observing closely with the eyes of an artist the ruins around him: his father was executed when he was just beginning to appreciate the world around him.
Through the purple haze, he looked at the horrors of the Second World War with the aseptic eyes of a wanderer and an optimist. Films like Katyn (2007) directly addressed the horrors of World War II with an unforgiving tone.
His own experiences saw him starting out with five consecutive films based on the War; each movie treating subjects of rare sensitivity with the deft touch of a master craftsman. His signature confrontationist style that he adopted in film after film proved to be an inspiration for generations of filmmakers after him (Martin Scorsese lists Wajda as an influence).
But above everything else, Wajda’s love for his own country overpowered his other urges for artistic incantation. Poland’s greatest filmmaker regularly dramatised the important milestones of Polish history in the 20th century, turning his films into political documentaries and addressing issues that had plagued the psyche of an entire nation for years.
His films often ended up personalising the political, depicting a society groaning under the weight of conformity and intellectual subjugation. Not surprisingly, he and his films (Ashes and Diamonds, 1958; Man of Marble, 1977) were often subject to stormy receptions.
Despite several of his subjects being considered taboo in his day, Wajda’s films never shied away from showing the bitter truth, even if it meant personal loss and risk. Although he was capable of churning out regular commercial stuff, he just could not tear himself away from what he perceived was like showing a mirror to his own countrymen.
His immersion in allegory and symbolism turned the most innocuous of imageries and idioms into potent tools, ready to serve his own subversive purposes. Symbols such as setting fire to a glass of liquor (representative of youthful idealism extinguished by the war) defined the auteur in him and became the reprise of his cinematic themes. His films (for example, Lotna, 1959; The Ashes, 1965) are replete with symbolic and surreal scenes.
However, the maverick never hesitated to explore other methods of self-realisation: exploring and experimenting with other styles and making them his own and imbuing them with pregnant semantics (for instance, Innocent Sorcerers (1960) starring Roman Polanski).
Though the list of his notables is rather long - he lived till a ripe age - Love at Twenty (1962), Siberian Lady Macbeth (1962) and Gates To Paradise (1968) stand out for their relentless hacking away of generations of mistrust and paranoia.
For the filmmaker who considered himself a painter first, his films were his own sketches of Polish history. His works undermined authoritarian regimes in Poland and fuelled the general perception that tyranny based on falsehood could and should be challenged and exposed.
He told the Poles the forbidden truths about their own country, laying bare the lies and the fear even while analysing the social order. Thus, the auteur’s works were both romantic and representative, experimental and conservative.
While receiving the honorary Oscar in 2000, Wajda recounted how his works were rooted in the soil of his country and could not be separated from it: “I think I have things to say…. But they are only important if I say them from Poland."