In Reply to: Re: Ashes and Diamonds is the one I was referring to (nt) posted by geoffkait on February 13, 2002 at 07:44:01:
There are very few war films that are any good, and these are amongst the very best. I was so moved by "Kanal" and "Ashes" I visited Poland in 2000 and was able to recognise street scenes and places in the Wajda films. I visited the memorial in Gdansk at the site of the Post Office where the Postal workers fought off the German Army for days; and the site of the uprising at the end of WW-2 where the Polish resistance was "sold-out" by the Red army failing to advance until they'd all been wiped out. Stories of unbelievable courage by ordinary people; thank God Wajda captured the essence of some of this bravery with such conviction. There were the "Solidarnosc" Gates at the shipyard entrance, and, of course, Auschwitz just outside of Krakow. With such a wealth of dramatic history there are more than enough themes for a filmmaker to draw on here.
Films in the same rarified genre; "Talvisota", "The Winter War", a Finnish film directed by Pekka Parikka (awesome), Das Boot, the BBC series, and if you can't get that, The Directors cut. Compare this to the 2-dimensional "U-571" Hollywood makeover and see how greatly they miss the target.
Eric
Tokyo*
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Follow Ups
- Touching a nerve:::War films - gware 19:18:38 02/13/02 (0)