MAN OF IRON Movie Review

Czlowiek z Zelaza

Andrzej Wajda's sequel to his 1976 Man of Marble focuses on a reporter who's been sent as a government shill to cover the Gdansk shipyards’ strike. He's been instructed to do a smear of one of the most outspoken of the strikers, Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), the son of the central figure in Man of Marble, now married to the reporter (Krystyna Janda) who in the earlier film uncovered the truth about Tomczyk's father. As the reporter becomes caught up in the passion and intensity of the history-changing events that he's been assigned to derail, even the copious amounts of vodka that he consumes can't stop the truth from flooding into his conscience. Wajda's film, made as the Gdansk upheaval was actually taking place, combines documentary footage and narrative fiction in a seamless, often brilliant fashion. Real figures (Lech Walesa among them) take their place within the same frame as fictional ones, and the distinction begins to matter less and less. Man of Iron is a less dramatically satisfying film than its predecessor, but it's an undeniably astounding cultural artifact.

NEXT STOP … Man of Marble, Medium Cool, Danton

1981 (PG) 116m/C PL Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Marian Opania, Krystyna Janda; D: Andrzej Wajda; W: Aleksander Scibor-Rylski; C: Edward Klosinski; M: Andrezej Korzynski. Cannes Film Festival ‘81: Best Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘81: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS MGM