Andrzej Wajda, born in 1926 and still active, is Eastern Europe's best known film director, and one of the most highly regarded. His first feature films were a trilogy about the war, of which Ashes and Diamonds is the third; the others, Generation and Kanal, are also well worth seeing. All three films take a sober, by no means wholly affirming look at the underground resistance to the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II, resistance which took place at great human cost. (Both Wajda and Jerzy Andrzejewski, the author of the 1948 novel from which the picture is made, belonged to  the underground.) Of the East European Communist states in the 1950s only Poland allowed such a nuanced discussion of the heroic anti-fascist struggle of the recent past; accordingly, Wajda's films were shown little if at all in neighboring Communist countries. But they established Wajda's reputation for courageously asking difficult questions and presenting his results with great cinematic skill.

The title comes from an epic poem by Cyprian Norwid (1821-83), read out in the ruined church during the film. Here is another translation:

From you, as from burning chips of resin,
Fiery fragments circle far and near:
Ablaze, you don't know if you are to be free,
Or if all that is yours will disappear.

Will only ashes and confusion remain,
Leading into the abyss? ? or will there be
In the depths of the ash a star-like diamond,
The dawning of eternal victory!

The setting: The story takes place from one afternoon to the next morning in May 1945, on the last day of the war, in an unnamed city in the Polish provinces. The Germans were driven out some time earlier, the Soviet army is firmly in command, and the city is undergoing the slow consolidation of a Communist-led regime. But it is still a time of ambiguities and uncertain outcomes. There is opposition from groups descended from the wartime resistance, most of which was anti-Communist as well as anti-German. The protagonist, Maciek, fought with such an anti-Communist underground movement; now he has taken on the assignment of assassinating an elderly Communist district leader, Szczuka. After an opening sequence in the countryside, nearly all the action takes place in a downtown hotel, where we meet a broad cast of characters while Maciek is reaching a decision about what he is going to do.

1) While the film is complex in various ways, its central story is simple. Afterwards, you should be able to retell the story in a paragraph.

2) Try to figure out Maciek's state of mind and his motivations.

3) Watch the camera work: the angles, the shots through windows and into mirrors, the deep-focus shots that include far more than the character or action we are supposedly looking at.

4) There are metaphors and symbols all over the place, some of them "baroque" (a word often applied to Wajda's work) or even absurdist. See what you can spot.

5) The standard history of post-war Polish film says: "While it is true that the figure of Maciek is attractive and even sympathetic, it is simply false to find that the film anywhere justifies his mission. Still, it was nothing less than amazing to think that a film would be allowed [in Communist Poland] in which the most attractive figure was an anti-Communist partisan." Do you agree that this is how the film works for the viewer? Would you see Maciek as the hero of the film?

6) Can you relate the story told in the film to the image in its title (i.e., in the poem quoted above)? This may help you evaluate the director's intentions.