The red carpet was rolled out at the 43rd Molodist film festival opening on Oct. 19 for famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s rousing biopic, “Walesa: Man of Hope,” about the great Lech Walesa – the simple Polish worker who brought down an empire – or kick-started it, at least.
Numerous celebrities attended Palace Ukraine that evening: former Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tigipko held court in the lobby, and former President Viktor Yushchenko strode on stage to present a lifetime achievement award to German director Ulrich Seidl and to give a speech hailing Molodist for bringing the world to Ukraine. A huge troop of Ukrainian dancers and singers intoned timeless native standards in rippling harmonics, and actress Nataliya Sumska surprised the audience with a short aria.
The contradictory nature of Walesa is
vividly portrayed by actor Robert Wieckiewicz – at once a rabble rouser, a
fighter, a devoted husband, a gifted speaker and a pain in the butt.
The brutality of the Communist system – the
coercion, co-option, and corruption, the police visits, blackmail, threats, and
beatings – is graphically displayed and underscores the deep courage it took to
stay the course. Real locations are used in the Gdansk shipyards, and
Wieckiewicz’s face is sometimes integrated onto historical footage.
Wieckiewicz shows Walesa’s innate
confidence and arrogance side by side with his self-depreciating analysis in a
recurring interview with famous Italian celebrity journalist Oriana Fallaci,
who was able to coax amazing admissions from seemingly everyone.
Agnieszka Grochowska sensitively portrayed
Walesa’s long suffering but tough young wife. As he heads off for possible
doom, Walesa leaves his wedding ring and his watch with instructions for her to
sell them if he doesn’t return. He struggles with the hot-heads on his strike
committee to not push too far, to not provoke the wrath that could easily
become total.
At the time Walesa seemed preternaturally
courageous, a lone man standing up to a hurricane of careless cruelty, a system
that had killed tens of millions, and subjugated or enslaved hundreds more.
Nobody thought he would survive. In truth the System was rotten to the core, built
on lies, stained by blood and collapsing from within. Walesa goes on to win the
Nobel Peace Prize and become free Poland’s first president, as his
secret police tormentors rue that, “he got away.”
In “Walesa:
Man of Hope,” incredibly durable 87-year old Andrzej Wajda returns to a
theme he featured in “Man of Marble” (1977), and “Man of Iron” (1981),
where Walesa was never explicitly identified. It was perhaps inevitable that
the Soviet empire would be brought down by Poles, an almost fanatically
courageous people who suffered badly in World War II. Walesa was that spark –
that right man in the right place at the right time, and without him, the
peaceful collapse of the Eastern Block and Soviet Union may have taken a
different path. The movie portrays his inspiring life and times with humor,
zest, and grace, and is highly recommended.
Michael
Hammerschlag is a journalist living in Kyiv. He can be reached at [email protected].
