In its headlong rush to declare its own importance, it forgets to be whatsoever engaging. Though a decently-crafted film, it is resolutely airless and leaden.
Comment
02/20/09
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Katyn (2007)
91
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Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:57
Fresh:52
Rotten:5
Average Rating:7.4/10
Consensus: Masterfully crafted by an experienced directorial hand, Katyn is a powerful, personal depiction of wartime tragedy.
Theatrical Release:Feb 18, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: Film Forum is proud to present Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, the story he has waited a lifetime to tell: Katyn is the name of the forest where the Soviets secretly murdered 15,000 Polish officers,... [More]
Starring: Maja Ostaszewska, Artur Zmijewski, Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Stenka
Director: Andrzej Wajda
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Reviews for Katyn
The power of this film comes not through the personal, although that is there, it comes through the tapestry woven by Wajda about that history, the exquisite recreation of the era culminating in a most dreadful and powerful final sequence.
05/22/09
A gritty political thriller, with a laser-like focus on those moments when Poland was undone by mounting circumstance.
02/19/09
The great filmmaker's urge to show generations of his countrymen what they were told not to think about is what moves him, and while "Katyn" rises above didacticism, you can feel the director keeping his emotions in check throughout.
05/28/09
Wajda, as you would expect from a director with an illustrious career who has lived through the turbulent and changing times of his homeland, proves himself adept at showing individuals at the mercy of history.
02/18/09
Delivering an emotional punch to the gut in the final reel, this engaging account of an under-reported tragedy will remind you how cinema can still rise to the occasion and go beyond the empty bangs and flashes of tent pole releases.
06/19/09
Andrzej Wajda has spent much of his long career dramatizing major events in Polish history, and this poignant feature depicts the circumstances surrounding the Soviet Union's massacre of thousands of Polish officers in the spring of 1940.
02/18/09
[Director] Wajda has brought some small measure of rest to their names, to Poland, and to history.
07/23/09
Top CriticWajda has assembled a really amazing ensemble cast to realize an excellent script ... beautifully shot by Pawel Edelman with some truly gorgeous sequences.
02/18/09
The picture is shot with the visual scope demanded by a narrative that aims in some sense to define an entire nation.
03/11/09
This is an important film that packs a powerful emotional punch almost 60 years after the main events.
06/19/09
A touch hard to tell what's going on at times, the film comes into its own towards the end as it portrays with shocking candour the genocide that still reverberates in Eastern Europe to this day.
06/19/09
Katyn is a solemn, troubling film that makes necessary demands on its audience.
06/19/09
Oscar-winning Polish writer/director Andrzej Wajda is now 83 years old. But he thankfully hasn't lost his ability to outrage viewers for all the right reasons.
10/02/09
The subject, the 1940 massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets, merits attention, but though personal (Wajda's father was a victim), Katyn is just a decent, far from great, melodrama due to helmer's curiously cold, detached approach.
02/20/09
This may not rank among his greatest masterpieces, but it’s exciting to see that Wajda still has a devastating, defiant work in him.
06/19/09
Austere treatment of a terribly personal WWII tragedy keeps this Polish elegy at arm's length.
05/26/09
The great Polish director Andrzej Wajda musters the power of classical filmmaking and personal emotional investment to dramatize a stunning atrocity long covered up.
02/18/09
Top CriticAn example of how a master filmmaker can make the past--in this case a World War II-era massacre--possess a bracing immediacy. Polish director Andrzej Wajda's film earned an Oscar nomination last year despite its departure from every Hollywood con
02/12/09
With exceptional commitment and artistry, Wajda's politically engaged filmmaking vividly brings Poland's tortured travails through the 20th century to the world's attention.
02/18/09
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