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Katy (film)
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Wikipedia article
'Katy' is a 2007 Polish historical drama film about the 1940 Katyn massacre, directed by Academy Honorary Award winner Andrzej Wajda. It is based on the book 'Post Mortem: The Story of Katyn' by Andrzej Mularczyk. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for the 80th Academy Awards.
Wajdas Katy is the first screen portrayal of this long-suppressed and highly controversial historical event.Steinberg, 2008: Wajdas film is the first cinematic attempt to deal with this highly controversial historical event. And: Even today, Russian authorities refuse to carry out any investigation into the events at Katy.
Historical Background
Six months before the massacres at Katyn, on August 23, 1939, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin authorized the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression agreement with Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany. Within days, German troops invaded western Poland, the first action aimed at fulfilling Hitlers ultimate goal of Lebensraum, Within days, Stalin sent Soviet troops into eastern Poland, a region historically at odds with its former rival, Tsarist Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Poles, including soldiers, officers and civilians were incarcerated or transported to the Soviet Union.Steinberg, 2008
Executions of prisoners
In early 1940, the head of the Russian secret police (NKVD), Lavrentiy Beria, was authorized by Stalin to liquidate selected prisoners. Most of the victims were murdered in the Katyn forest near Smolensk, Russia, at Kalinin (Tver, and at Kharkiv prison, where Wajdas father, a Polish cavalry officer, was executed.Niemitz and Steinberg, 2016: Wajdas father was executed, as part of the same operation, in an NKVD prison in Kharkiv in the Ukraine.Steinberg, 2008: Katyn is the name of the town near Smolensk in Russia where the executions took place.
Over 20,000 members of Polands intelligentsia and military forces were slaughtered, usually by a bullet to the head. Stalins rationale for the extermination of Polish executive and military staff was that it eliminated social and political elements that may have organized opposition to his policies.Steinberg, 2008: an estimated 22,000 Polish officers and intellectualsincluding Wajdas own fatherwho were slaughtered by Soviet troops at the start of 1940.
When the Germans had established military bases in Poland, Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet UnionOperation Barbarossawhich would kill tens of millions of Russian civilians and soldiers.Steinberg, 2008
Plot
used by the NKVD for transport of prisoners; the bus was reconstructed for the purpose of the film.
The events of Katyn are relayed through the eyes of the women, the mothers, wives, and daughters of the victims executed on Stalin's orders by the NKVD in 1940.
Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski) is a young Polish captain in the 8th Uhlan Regiment of Duke Jozef Poniatowski, who keeps a detailed diary. In September 1939, following the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, he is taken prisoner by the Red Army, which separates the officers from the enlisted men, who are allowed to return home, while the officers are held. His wife Anna (Maja Ostaszewska) and daughter Weronika, nicknamed "Nika" (Wiktoria Gsiewska), find him shortly before he is deported to the USSR. Presented with an opportunity to escape, he refuses on the basis of his oath of loyalty to the Polish military.
Helped by a sympathetic Soviet officer, Anna manages to return to the family's home in Krakow with her daughter. There, the Germans carry out Sonderaktion Krakau, shutting down Jagiellonian University and deporting professors to concentration camps. Andrzej's father is one of the professors deported; later, his wife gets a message that he died in a camp in 1941.
In a prisoner of war camp, Andrzej is detained for a while and continues to keep a diary. He carefully records the names of all his fellow officers who are removed from the camp, and the dates on which they are taken. During the winter, Andrzej is clearly suffering in the low temperature, and his colleague Jerzy (Andrzej Chyra) lends him an extra sweater. As it happens, the sweater has Jerzy's name written on it. Finally, Andrzej's is taken from the camp, while Jerzy is left behind.
In 1943, the population of Krakow is informed by the German occupation authorities about the Katyn massacre. Capitalizing on the Soviet crime, Nazi propaganda publishes lists with the names of the victims exhumed in mass graves behind the advancing German troops. Andrzej's name is not on the list, giving his wife and daughter hope.
After the war, Jerzy, who has survived, has enlisted in the People's Army of Poland (LWP), which is under the complete control of the pro-Soviet Polish United Worker's Party. He feels personal loyalty to his friends, loves his country, and has sympathy for those who have suffered. He visits Anna and her daughter to tell them that Andrzej is dead. Apparently, when the list of the names of the victims was compiled, Andrzej was misidentified as Jerzy on the basis of the name in the sweater that Jerzy had lent to Andrzej; it was Andrzej who was killed, not Jerzy. Despondent that he is now forced to acknowledge a lie and to serve those who killed his comrades in Katyn, Jerzy commits suicide.
Evidence of Soviet responsibility for the Katyn massacre is carefully concealed by the authorities. However, a few daring people working with the effects of the victims eventually deliver Andrzej's diary to his widow Anna. The diary clearly shows the date in 1940 when he must have been killed from the absence of entries on subsequent days. The date of the massacre is crucial for assigning responsibility: if it happened in 1940, the USSR controlled the territory, while by mid-1941 the Germans took control over it.
The film ends with a re-enactment of parts of the massacre, as several of the principal characters are executed along with other soldiers.
The film includes excerpts from German newsreels presenting the Katyn massacre as a Soviet crime, and excerpts from Soviet newsreels presenting the massacre as a German crime.
Production
Filming began on October 3, 2006, and ended on January 9, 2007. The film premiered on September 17, 2007, the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.
Cast
* Andrzej Chyra, as Jerzy Porucznik (1st Lieutenant) in the 8th Uhlan Regiment
* Artur mijewski, as Andrzej Rotmistrz (Captain) of 8th Uhlan Regiment
* Maja Ostaszewska, as Anna, wife of Andrzej
* Wiktoria Gsiewska, as Weronika ("Nika"), daughter of Andrzej and Anna
* Wadysaw Kowalski, as Jan, father of Andrzej and a professor at the Krakw University
* Maja Komorowska, as Maria, mother of Andrzej
* Jan Englert, as General
* Danuta Stenka, as Ra, wife of the General
* Sergei Garmash, as Captain Popov - a sympathetic and protective Red Army officer
* Agnieszka Kawiorska, as Ewa, daughter of General and Ra
* Stanisawa Celiska, as Stasia a servant in the General's house
* Pawe Maaszyski, as Piotr Baszkowski, a lieutenant ('porucznik pilot') with 1 Aviation Regiment, Dblin
* Magdalena Cielecka, as sister of Piotr
* Agnieszka Gliska, as sister of Piotr
* Anna Radwan, as Elbieta a relative of Anna
* Antoni Pawlicki, as Tadeusz, son of Elbieta
* Alicja Dbrowska, as an actress
* Jakub Przebindowski, as priest Wikary
* Krzysztof Globisz, as a medical doctor
* Oleh Drach, as a commissar
* Jacek Braciak, as a lieutenant Klin
Reception
The premiere of Katy exactly 68 years to the day after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, was a major political event, attended by members of the Polish political establishment. Historian Stefan Steinberg writes:
Wajda acknowledged in his production notes that President Kaczynski had provided honorary patronage during the films production.Steinberg, 2008: ...according to Wajdas production notes, the film was made under the honorary patronage of Lech Kaczynski.
Though Wajda reassured Berlin journalists that Katy was not conceived as anti-Russian propaganda, conservative German chancellor, Angela Merkel attended its premiere.Steinberg, 2008: In Berlin Wajda disingenuously told newspapers that he did not regard his new film to be politicalThe political nature of the film was underlined at its European premiere in Berlin, which was attended bythe right-wing German chancellor, Angela Merkel.Niemitz, 2016: Wajda denied his film was anti-Russian, although all of the Soviet figures portrayed in the filmwith one notable exceptionare thugs and brutes.
Wajda ultimately registered a formal objection to President Kaczynski regarding the politicizing of Katy.Steinberg, 2008: Wajda subsequently addressed a letter to the president objecting to the overtly political exploitation of his film during the election campaign In one of his last interviews, shortly before his death in 2016, Wajda declared:
'Katy' has an approval rating of 91% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 68 reviews, and an average rating of 7.28/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Masterfully crafted by an experienced directorial hand, 'Katyn' is a powerful, personal depiction of wartime tragedy". It also has a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Controversy
During the post-war era Soviet authorities in Poland suppressed the historical truth surrounding the events at Katyn. Dorota Niemtz writes:
Not until 1989, with the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, did the first non-communist Polish government acknowledge that the crime was committed under the direction of Joseph Stalin. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Soviet responsibility for the Katy massacre for the first time. In 1991, Boris Yeltsin made public the documents which had authorized the massacre.Steinberg, 2008: Only in 1989 did Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, admit the NKVDs responsibility for the crime.
On September 18, 2007, 'Rossiyskaya gazeta', the official newspaper of the Russian government, published a short comment by Alexander Sabov claiming that the widely accepted version of the tragedy is based on a single dubious copy of a document related to the massacre, and hence the evidence for the Soviet responsibility would be unreliable. . . . 'Rossiyskaya gazeta' 206 (#4469), September 18, 2007. This prompted an immediate response from the Polish media. As a retort, the next day, 'Gazeta Wyborcza' emphasized the formal admission by the Soviet Union of NKVD responsibility and republished documents to that effect.Wojciechowski, Marcin. [http://www.gazetawyborcza.pl/1,76842,4511792.html Niebieski owek Stalina]. 'Gazeta Wyborcza', September 24, 2007.
In April 2009, the authorities of the People's Republic of China banned the movie from being distributed in the country due to its anti-communist ideology. However, imported copies are widely available.
See also
*GermanSoviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk
*PolandRussia relations
*Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (19391946)
*'World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West'
Footnotes
Sources
*Michalek, Boleslaw. 1973. 'The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda.' The Tanvity Press. A. S. Barnes and Company. New York.
*Niemitz, Dorata and Steinberg, Stefan. 2016. 'Polish film and theatre director Andrzej Wajda dead at 90.' World Socialist Web Site, 14 October, 2016. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/14/wajd-o14.html Retrieved 04 July, 2022.
*Saubhik Ghosh. 'Katyn-Kolonko (The Katyn Crime)'. Bengali, EKDIN, Sunday Supplement Cover Story*
*Steinberg, Stefan. 2008. 'KatynThe political agenda of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda.' World Socialist Web Site, 05 March, 2008. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/03/berl-m05.html Retrieved 09 July, 2022.
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