Katyń is a 2007 film directed by Andrzej Wajda.
It is a film about the infamous Katyń massacre
during World War II. Stalin's Soviet Union, having invaded Eastern Poland soon after the German invasion of Western Poland, captured tens of thousand of Polish Army officers. In the spring of 1940, they murdered them, massacring some 22,000 officers and dumping their bodies in mass graves in the Katyń forest and other locations.
The film follows various people who lost loved ones in the massacre. Anna is married to Andrzej, a captain in the 8th Uhlans Regiment. As the Soviets flood into Eastern Poland in 1940 she finds her husband in a POW camp and begs him to flee, but he doesn't, citing his honor as an officer. She hears nothing from him for years but when the Germans find the bodies of the officers and Andrzej's name is not on the list of dead, she thinks that he has survived. She later finds out that she is tragically wrong. Meanwhile, in the days after the Red Army conquers Poland and the war ends, the Soviets lie to the world, conducting a fake investigation to "prove" that the massacres took place after summer 1941, when the Germans controlled the area around Katyń.
Other characters include the general in command of Andrzej's regiment, the general's wife Rosa, Anna's nephew Tadeusz, and Agnieszka and Magdalena, two sisters of a murdered lieutenant named Piotr.
In Real Life, Andrzej Wajda's father was one of the Polish officers killed in 1940.
Tropes:
- Blood from the Mouth: That and Dies Wide Open are how the movie shows that Anna's nephew Tadeusz is dead, after he's struck by a car while running from the cops.
- Call-Forward: Jerzy, in the camp, notes a German and a Russian officer chatting to each other pleasantly, and says "How long do you think their friendship will last?". One year and nine months, it turned out, until Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941.
- Day of the Jackboot: Poland is crushed under the dual jackboots of Germany and the USSR in September 1939.
- Disturbed Doves: Pigeons fly off a tree as the plainclothes State Sec guy follows Agnieska into the graveyard. She is arrested and the grave marker she got for her brother is destroyed.
- Downer Beginning: Well, the whole movie is a series of downers. But the opening scene has Polish civilians crossing a bridge, heading west to escape the Nazis, only to meet another crowd of civilians trying to cross the bridge in the other direction, escaping from the Soviets.
- Dramatic Sit-Down: Maria, Anna's mother-in-law, sits down heavily in a chair, in despair, after Anna reads the official notice from the Germans that Maria's husband Jan, Anna's father-in-law, died in a German concentration camp in 1941.
- Driven to Suicide: Unable to live with his guilt over being a collaborator, Jerzy shoots himself.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Overcome with guilt and shame over both surviving the massacres and serving the Russians, Jerzy gets good and drunk in a bar, screaming at the Russian officers present that they're responsible for Katyń. Then he kills himself.
- Empire with a Dark Secret: After the Russians conquer Poland and absorb it into the Communist bloc, they engage in a massive cover-up in which they try to pin the blame for Katyń on the Germans. They play for the Polish public newsreels showing a fake investigation that supposedly proves the Germans did it. When Agnieszka tries to put up a grave marker stating that her brother was killed in April 1940, the grave marker is destroyed and she is thrown into prison.
- Fainting: After getting the terrible news from Jerzy, Anna walks away, tells her mother-in-law that Andrzej is dead, and then faints.
- It Will Never Catch On: Magdalena, who has elected to collaborate with the Soviets, says "There will never be a free Poland." Poland was freed in 1989.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Captain Popov's main motivation for helping Anna and her family is that he is clearly infatuated with her. She rejects his advances, but that does not change his attitude in the least and he keeps doing his best to save her.
- Loved I Not Honor More: When Anna finds Andrzej in Soviet custody, she is carrying civilian clothes. She notes that the guards aren't watching too closely and that he can quickly change and flee. He refuses, saying that he has to stay in uniform due to his honor as a Polish officer.
- Meet Cute: Played straight, then subverted with Tadeusz and Ewa. Tadeusz rips down a pro-Soviet poster, then is chased by the police. He sees total stranger Ewa in the street and shouts for her help. She whisks him inside a building and up to a roof where he hides from the police below. They introduce themselves, kiss, and make plans to go to the movies. Then after he leaves the building, Tadeusz blunders into the police again, and is killed.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Andrzej's friend Jerzy was on the list of Katyń dead, so Anna is astonished to see him show up in Cracow in 1945. When she says that he was reported dead, he says "Yes, but it's a mistake. I live, as you see." It turns out that Jerzy survived long enough to join the pro-Soviet Polish army. He then has to tell Anna the terrible news: he was reported dead because he gave a sweater, with his name on it, to Andrzej in the POW camp. It was Andrzej who was killed, wearing Jerzy's sweater.
- Silent Credits: After the grim last scene, a Flashback showing the murder of Andrzej and the other officers in his unit, the credits play silently.
- Stock Footage:
- Polish civilians getting Christmas trees in the grim Christmas 1939 season.
- Later, stock footage of both German (1943) and Soviet (1945) newsreels of the exhumation and examination of the bodies in the mass graves.
- Time Skip: From 1940 and the disappearance of the Polish officers, to 1943 and the discovery of the mass graves in and around Katyń. Then to 1945 and the Soviet conquest of Poland and their cover-up of their own responsibility for the massacre.
- Token Good Teammate: Captain Popov, the one Russian who isn't evil. He offers to marry Anna to protect her (he doesn't say so, but he knows her husband is dead). Then, when the NKVD comes to arrest the families of the murdered officers, Popov hides Anna and her daughter Nika before telling them to get out of Russian-controlled Poland as soon as possible.
- Voiceover Letter: Andrzej's diary entries are presented this way, in the first part of the movie when he's documenting life in the POW camp, and in the last scene when he's still scribbling in the diary on the way to the execution site.
