Kanal

Second in Andrzej Wajda’s celebrated cinematic war trilogy, Kanal opens with what seems like a conventional expository preamble for the genre. A ragtag column of Polish resistance fighters marches past the camera, negotiating the rubble and wreckage of a besieged Warsaw. The main characters file by in short order, a somber gravel-voiced narrator concluding his introductions with this fatalistic epigraph:

“Watch them closely, for these are the last hours of their lives.”

The next segment of the film focuses on the company’s efforts to retain their wits and resolve in the midst of the German’s impending and overwhelming attack. Some drink, others fornicate, most fall into the familiar war movie archetypes: the stoic C.O. who cares more for his troops’ safety than his own; the temerarious daredevil willing to risk life and limb; the plucky company mascot; the bean counting by-the-book subordinate; the civilian artist brought into the group as a refugee. Several of the characters also have affectionate nicknames, Slim, Wise and Daisy among them, that suggest further familiar ties to the genre. There are also a number of children in the ranks, each as willing as the adults to shoulder arms and fight. Wajda takes pains to illustrate the youth and life still left in this people and the tragedy of their imminent demise. The battle scenes are impressive on one level, with long tracking shots of the destruction that reminded me of some of imagery in the recent theatrical release Children of Men. There are moments where it’s difficult to discern whether Wadja is using historical stock footage or actually staged the scenes himself, such is the scale and detail of havoc. Nevertheless, much of the close quarters combat feels strangely stilted and unrealistic.

The film picks up again with a calculated retreat into the city’s sewers and its here that the harrowing action hits a new high. Separated in the maze-like passageways, the company, now reduced by casualties to platoon size, stumbles about in fragmented packs. Some fall prey to German grenades dropped from manholes; others become hopelessly disoriented, wading through the waist-deep pools of excrement and filth. Wadja pulls no punches in realistically depicting the subterranean surroundings and the characters are soon caked and smeared in steaming fecal matter. It’s difficult to determine whether the gas percolating up from the porridge-like muck is methane or the contents of submerged Zyklon canisters. The fates of nearly all are not as inconclusive. One wanders the tunnels as a sanity-cracked somnambulist, playing haunting strains on an ocarina. Two others survive several brushes with death and reach apparent safety, only to find their way barred by an impassable obstruction. As promised in the preamble, the film concludes on a bleak note, one mirroring the filmmakers’ opinion that the event upon which it was based was ultimately an ill-conceived and deleterious plan for Poland’s future. Those political undertones take a secondary seat to the film’s visuals. Shot in grainy black and white with low light and an abundance of menacing shadows, the sewer segments in particular deliver scenes that stick.