Maciek and Andrzej, two ex-Home Army soldiers, ambush two vehicles driving towards a chapel and shoot the men inside, hoping they assassinated the communist Commissar Szczuka. Returning to Warsaw, they hear of the German peace treaty, which ends World War II on 8 May 1 9 4 5. As they stop in a hotel, they find out that Szczuka survived, and thus Maciek rents a room next to his, aiming to finish Szczuka after the latter returns from a festivity celebrating the end of the war. Maciek sleeps with Krystyna, a barmaid, and visits the ruins of a local church with her. When Szczuka returns that night on foot, Maciek shoots him on the street. In the morning, their secret agent Drewnowski wants to join Andrzej, but only manages to scare and chase the latter away. In the commotion, Maciek is shot by three communist soldiers and dies.
Widely recognized as one of the most influential and notable Polish films of the 20th century, "Ashes and Diamonds" is a peculiar patchwork, most notably because it stubbornly refuses to accept its World War II genre, and instead creates an unusual syncretism with a "Young Rebel" subgenre thanks to its main star, Zbigniew Cybulski, the "Polish James Dean" who untypically wears sunglasses throughout the story, chewing the scenery. However, this 'old-modern' duality reflects the major theme of the film, which is a meditation on Poland torn between the West and the East during that era. The director Andrzej Wajda starts off the movie with a fantastic opening sequence: Maciek and Andrzej lie in the meadow, until they hear two vehicles approaching a church, and then machine-gun the drivers in an ambush, hoping they fulfilled their goal of assassinating the communist Commissar Szczuka, already signaling that, even though World War II is over, the war between the democratic and communist Polish forces will wage on for several decades in the future. The twist where Szczuka actually survived unharmed, and checks in at the precise Warsaw hotel where the two are staying at, is deliciously undermined with Maciek lowering his newspaper upon hearing his target walking in next to him. Bizarrely, and most unsettling, this main story then "vanishes" for a whole hour, and the movie shifts its focus on a dozen episodic characters roaming the hotel and the bar, who are all "off-topic", but all paint a bigger picture of Poland during the war through small lines and interactions: for instance, Krystyna casually mentions how her father died at Dachau; a drunk man accosts an official for collaborationism; a sly dialogue depicts the situation in the country ("Everything is closed down. Except for the prison") whereas the surreal image of the giant crucifix hanging upside down in a devastated church clearly shows how religion was abrogated during communism. Cybulski's Maciek is a such a daft character, who constantly acts "cool", that it is surprising, as if he came from a different movie (the sequence where he asks Krystyna out for a date, but she just sticks her tongue out towards him, really was unheard off for the genre back then), and such a freshness perforates the entire film, until it returns back to its assassination story near the end, which is slightly anti-climatic, though still memorable.
Grade:+++
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