The 87 year old Andrzej Wajda is the most honoured Polish film director. He received an honorary Oscar in 2000, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981, has several awards from the Berlin Film Festival and numerous awards from other important International film festivals the world over. Despite the fact that Andrzej Wajda already won the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 1998 Venice International Film Festival, this year Wajda has been awarded “the 2013 Persol prize of the Venice International Film Festival, which intends to celebrate a legend of international cinema”. 

On the official site of La Biennale di Venezia, in commenting on this award, the Director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera states: “Wajda is not just the most emblematic director in post-war Polish filmmaking. He is the director who has been capable, in his work (over 50 films in his more than sixty-year career), of raising the most decisive and important questions about the history of his country, and consequently, of Europe in its entirety, inviting us to reflect on the critical relationship between personal experiences and those of an entire nation, between the anguish that often befalls individual destinies and the weight of the collective task they are called upon to accomplish”. The new film of Andrzej Wajda tells us about Lech Wałęsa the charismatic Polish political leader, who co-founded the Independent Self-governing Trade Union "Solidarity", that had up to 10 million members. In short, Lech Wałęsa is a symbol of freedom for Polish people. He went against the socialistic system in Poland and against Soviet Communist dominance. There is no doubt that a film about this legendary person had to be made. But the question is what’s the main goal of this movie? It seems to me that the proper aim could be to make a film that would make Lech Walesa internationally recognizable as a contemporary hero  and make him into a symbol of leadership. A symbol capable of inspiring other young people to assume leadership in the name of freedom in any country at any time. It should be a movie that is understandable all over the world to any age-category and without the need for any special knowledge. However, the authors of the film decided to make  a “national” movie, a movie that is full of historical facts and details, one which could only be understood by people with the same educational/national/social/age-specific background. To be honest I feel myself a little bit embarrassment to write this review and criticize the film of  the person whose filmschool I finished less than one year ago. Each time I attended my classes in the Warsaw Filmstudio, I passed the costume-wagon with a big sign proclaiming: “Walesa”. Everyone was talking about this film and sometimes I would hear from others that “today, shootings for Walesa will take place”. This film was my #1 film-of-interest in the Venice Film Festival 2013 programme. I checked everyday how many days left till the first screening for the press… I came to the screening 30 minutes earlier, expecting a huge queue, but almost nobody was there…
But let’s speak about concrete details. The structure of the movie is built on an interview between Lech Walesa and the famous Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (Maria Rosaria Omaggio). Andrzej Wajda said at the press-conference that at first, he wished to have just one scene of the interview at the beginning of the movie but during the development of the script, the interview became the main element of the storyline’s construction. And it seems to me that it was the wrong decision because the scenes of this interview create pauses in the development of the story and interrupt the blossoming emotional connection and empathy between the viewers and the main protagonists. Also I found the whole conception of Lech Walesa’s character (Robert Więckiewicz) to be extremely one- sided and shallow. The Director presents him as a cheerful common  worker who sometimes plays with the audience and wants to be liked by beautiful, foreign woman. He almost never seems to be serious (besides the scenes which show his first arrest). Everything is easy for him… It sounds weird, but even though there are a lot of scenes exhibiting protests and strikes, you don’t feel that there is any conflict in this movie. The character of Lech Walesa doesn’t change and develop, we don’t really worry about him even when he is taken from his flat to Warsaw… I understand that the main idea of the movie was to show  his strength but we can never see the strength of a hero without also seeing his weaknesses. The character of his wife Danuta is the most vivid and compelling in the movie. The role of the leader’s wife is magnificently played by Agnieszka Grochowska. She has to manage alone at home with six kids, support her husband in his political tasks, wait for him when he is in a prison… But again there is no development in her character.

Chronologically, the film begins in 1970 when workers’ protests in Gdansk were brutally suppressed by the state forces and ends in 1989 when Lech Walesa makes his famous speech to the US Congress. All intervening historical events of Polish history are covered in the movie. Andrzej Wajda uses a lot of interesting archive material and masterly edits it with shot material. Sometimes it is really difficult to figure out which footage is “new” and which is “original”. But it is not difficult to notice that all the music is “new”. I can’t understand why these pop-genre songs appear so harshly and so often in the film. Why use songs with such simple lyrics that comment on what we are seeing directly on the screen?  Why use this annoying music which simply draws your attention  away from what is happening in the movie?...  I’m sure that this movie will become a national film-icon. It will be watched by children in schools and by all those from the Solidarity generation. But unfortunately I think it won’t become a masterpiece of cinematographic art.. N/A