Director: Andrzej Wajda
Writers: Jerzy Andrzejewski, Andrzej Wajda
Photography: Jerzy Wojcik
Music: Filip Nowak
Editor: Halina Nawrocka
Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska, Adam Pawlikowski, Waclaw Zastrzezynski, Bogumil Kobiela
I better admit right away this movie has never worked well for me. I’ve tried it a couple times in the last 10 or 15 years, and if third time’s the charm—and by that I only mean I saw a case for it better, at last—it’s hard for me to rally around it much. Ashes and Diamonds is the third in a trilogy of World War II pictures by Polish director and cowriter Andrej Wajda, after A Generation (1954) and Kanal (1956). Seeing the others might have helped but I didn’t even know about them as a trilogy until more recently and was not motivated much by then for further research. Understanding Polish history and/or WWII history better might have helped too.
Ashes and Diamonds has the style of an art picture, with a swirling approach to telling the story and lots of impressive shots in a silvery black and white grain and fancy camera angles and movement. Wajda and crew are obviously naturals of film but the spy story in this peculiar and specific war setting can be confusing, taking place in Poland on May 8, 1945, the last day of the war in the European theater. It involves an assassination attempt on a Soviet official by the Polish resistance in an isolated countryside sequence that opens the picture. The attempt goes wrong, killing the wrong people. The would-be assassins, Maciel (Zbigniew Cybulski) and Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski), find that out on their return to town. They must finish the job before dawn. The wrinkle: Maciel falls deeply in love at first sight with a barmaid, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), and can’t decide if he’s still able to go through with “all this killing.”
I better admit right away this movie has never worked well for me. I’ve tried it a couple times in the last 10 or 15 years, and if third time’s the charm—and by that I only mean I saw a case for it better, at last—it’s hard for me to rally around it much. Ashes and Diamonds is the third in a trilogy of World War II pictures by Polish director and cowriter Andrej Wajda, after A Generation (1954) and Kanal (1956). Seeing the others might have helped but I didn’t even know about them as a trilogy until more recently and was not motivated much by then for further research. Understanding Polish history and/or WWII history better might have helped too.
Ashes and Diamonds has the style of an art picture, with a swirling approach to telling the story and lots of impressive shots in a silvery black and white grain and fancy camera angles and movement. Wajda and crew are obviously naturals of film but the spy story in this peculiar and specific war setting can be confusing, taking place in Poland on May 8, 1945, the last day of the war in the European theater. It involves an assassination attempt on a Soviet official by the Polish resistance in an isolated countryside sequence that opens the picture. The attempt goes wrong, killing the wrong people. The would-be assassins, Maciel (Zbigniew Cybulski) and Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski), find that out on their return to town. They must finish the job before dawn. The wrinkle: Maciel falls deeply in love at first sight with a barmaid, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), and can’t decide if he’s still able to go through with “all this killing.”
Along the way, in this long night, Maciel and Krystyna find a passage etched on a wall in a crypt, or possibly the city morgue, which among other things explains the title: “So often you are like a blazing torch with flakes of burning hemp falling about you. Flaming, you know not whether flames bring freedom or death, consuming all that you most cherish. Will only ashes remain, and chaos, whirling into the void...” Krystyna stops reading and says, “It’s blurred. I can’t read it.” But of course Maciel knows the passage. “It’s by Cyprian Norwid,” he says, reciting: “Or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond, the Morning Star of everlasting triumph.”
I really find it hard to believe that poetry is top of mind in their situation, but Maciel’s change of personality is even harder. For the first half of the movie he comes across as almost psychotic, assassinating with seeming pleasure or at least cockiness, unfazed by killing the wrong people. His attempts to pick up Krystyna as she draws beer in the pub seem similarly brutal and unfeeling. He acts like someone on the prowl purely for tail, high on his kills. But he’s surprised when she actually comes to his room after she gets off work and that’s where it starts. She doesn’t even seem to know herself why she’s there.
But once they get to talking—something like the principals in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless a year or two later—love sweet love is what is on the menu, and Maciel’s personality change is so complete that even his appearance seems altered. He is all vulnerability and aching sincerity now. Of course he knows poetry by heart. Give director Wajda credit for arguably getting to various points ahead of much of the heroic era of art film just around the corner. There’s Truffaut as well as Godard in the couple’s banter, in their dynamics, in the infatuations and playfulness. Some of the shots here, such as at least one with a closeup on one-half of the screen and a long shot on the other, reminded me of Michelangelo Antonioni’s work as well. Wajda is getting to these points before the French New Wave and Antonioni et al., so credit where due.
Even the war / spy aspects of Ashes and Diamonds have their problems, such as not only cars randomly bursting into flames but human beings hit with machine-gun blasts as well, virtually spontaneously. Cars have ridiculously been bursting into flames in action movies for as long as I can recall, but I think this may be the first and only time I’ve seen it happen to someone who has been shot. Presumably this flaming up has something to do with the mystical power of machine guns in 1958. Thinking of the circumstances—namely, Poland in 1958—it seems likely Wajda did not have much of a budget to work with. It shows in many places, but the style is artful enough it’s not really noticeable. It’s even possible the picture did have a budget.
Also, obviously, I should look into the whole trilogy, all three of which are presently available on the Criterion Channel. There are definitely glimmers of impressive war / spy movie work here, and Poland on May 8, 1945, is a particularly interesting and auspicious point to look at closely, a key intersection historically of communism and fascism. But this promising story is interrupted by a fairly trite romance which takes over Ashes and Diamonds with poetry and batting eyelashes and wrenches it out of shape. I know the picture, the trilogy, and Wajda have their partisans. I’m just not quite on board yet.
I really find it hard to believe that poetry is top of mind in their situation, but Maciel’s change of personality is even harder. For the first half of the movie he comes across as almost psychotic, assassinating with seeming pleasure or at least cockiness, unfazed by killing the wrong people. His attempts to pick up Krystyna as she draws beer in the pub seem similarly brutal and unfeeling. He acts like someone on the prowl purely for tail, high on his kills. But he’s surprised when she actually comes to his room after she gets off work and that’s where it starts. She doesn’t even seem to know herself why she’s there.
But once they get to talking—something like the principals in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless a year or two later—love sweet love is what is on the menu, and Maciel’s personality change is so complete that even his appearance seems altered. He is all vulnerability and aching sincerity now. Of course he knows poetry by heart. Give director Wajda credit for arguably getting to various points ahead of much of the heroic era of art film just around the corner. There’s Truffaut as well as Godard in the couple’s banter, in their dynamics, in the infatuations and playfulness. Some of the shots here, such as at least one with a closeup on one-half of the screen and a long shot on the other, reminded me of Michelangelo Antonioni’s work as well. Wajda is getting to these points before the French New Wave and Antonioni et al., so credit where due.
Even the war / spy aspects of Ashes and Diamonds have their problems, such as not only cars randomly bursting into flames but human beings hit with machine-gun blasts as well, virtually spontaneously. Cars have ridiculously been bursting into flames in action movies for as long as I can recall, but I think this may be the first and only time I’ve seen it happen to someone who has been shot. Presumably this flaming up has something to do with the mystical power of machine guns in 1958. Thinking of the circumstances—namely, Poland in 1958—it seems likely Wajda did not have much of a budget to work with. It shows in many places, but the style is artful enough it’s not really noticeable. It’s even possible the picture did have a budget.
Also, obviously, I should look into the whole trilogy, all three of which are presently available on the Criterion Channel. There are definitely glimmers of impressive war / spy movie work here, and Poland on May 8, 1945, is a particularly interesting and auspicious point to look at closely, a key intersection historically of communism and fascism. But this promising story is interrupted by a fairly trite romance which takes over Ashes and Diamonds with poetry and batting eyelashes and wrenches it out of shape. I know the picture, the trilogy, and Wajda have their partisans. I’m just not quite on board yet.
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