Debasmita Biswas

15 March 2008

Post- Second World War Communist Poland formed a government that demanded absolute

discipline to the state and party. It was a political order that did not allow the existence of

dissidence within the society or subsisted in denial of it. Despite the reactionary actions of the

state a latent dissidence found expression in literature and film. Andrej Wajda’s Man of Marble

and more emphatically, Man of Iron are located within the discourse of Polish dissidence

operating in the era of Eastern Europe and Soviet partnership. Each film is shaped by the

political climate of its specific historical context. Man of Marble with its taut, aesthetic vision

was produced during the censorship of 1977. The sequel Man of Iron was made in the

comparatively liberal cultural politics of 1980-81. The films confront a political entity that had

the governmental and economic apparatus of a state supported by the superstructure of Soviet

overlordship. This paper will explore the dissident aspects as articulated by and through the film

Man of Marble and in that context refer to Man of Iron.

Andrzej Wajda functions within a particular political society located in a

Communist Poland with democratic pretensions. However, in actuality the state had become

totalitarian within which there was a resistance, an expression of dissidence. In Poland it was

Solidarity, a broad anti-Communist social movement that withstood the repression of the

establishment and eventually overcame it.

Man of Iron and Man of Marble document the rise of Solidarity. Man of Marble is a

more subtle depiction of the latent dissident voices within the society. It looks at different forms

of manifestation of that dissidence. The films convey a political message, more subtly in Man of

Marble and more overtly in Man of Iron. Wajda’s Solidarity films endure as essential cultural

residue of Poland’s checkered revolutionary past. The dominant ideology of socialism makes its

presence felt in these works of Wajda. The films in question debate the intentions of this system

of values whether through indirect references or an open challenge of it.

In these films, the socialist ideology is presented in two ways. First as a set of

values within which the protagonists of the film function, as in the films of social security in the

sixties in Poland, during the period of economic stabilization under Gomulka. Secondly, as a

point of reference in the films of the Polish school called "the films of moral concern" in the

seventies1. In these films, the socialist ideology is present, with its theoretical love for humans

and their work and a belief in democracy and equal distribution of material benefits among

citizens. However, it is simultaneously undermined by the undercurrent of opposition present

either in a particularly grim or engaging cinematography, a solution to the plot, or other means

detected by intelligent spectators.

Although describing simple events of no specific political importance, the films

can be read as subversive statements, undermining the dominant ideology through the method of

presentation. Despite an official ban on subversive messages, powerful oppositional statements

are present in the form of Aesopian tales, which the Eastern European spectator deciphers with

utmost delight. The film makes fleeting references to Catholicism. First, during the opening

credits roll the sound recordist of Agnieszka’s (played by Krystyna Janda) crew is shown

1 ‘"The Political" in the Films of Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski’, Janina Falkowska Cinema Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2. (Winter, 1995), pp. 37-50.

wearing a cross. Secondly, Birkut makes the sign of a cross before the enactment of the heroic

spectacle of laying ten thousand bricks in a celebration of the proletarian spirit. The filmmaker

(Bruski) who is recording the event reacts to the gesture with irritation. The assertion of

Catholicism, an ideology not accommodated in the atheistic communist discourse, becomes an

instance of dissidence. Agnieszka’s film becomes another act of dissidence. It deals with a

controversial subject and recovers films that were suppressed. The narrative in itself becomes

self-reflexive. It is a dissident film about the making of a dissident film that attacks Stalinist

Realism. Birkut’s life too becomes an instance of dissidence. His idealism and faith in the

apparently progressive system is followed by disillusionment. Birkut transforms, from an

empathiser to a discontent and finally a dissident. It is presumed that he was shot by the Polish

secret police during a mass protest. Therefore the system that once valorised him later disowns

him as a persona non grata. The film prophetically terminates at the Gdansk shipyards, the

germination point of Solidarity. The person Agnieszka meets there is Birkut’s son, Maciej

Tomczyk, who is the bearer of a dissident legacy. He will also play a crucial role in the next film

Man of Iron which is a depiction of the Solidarity Movement and Lech Walesa himself makes a

brief appearance in the film. Thus the act of dissidence forms a kind of triumvirate with the

actual filmmaker (Wajda), the fictional filmmaker (Agnieszka) and the fictional character Birkut

in Man of Marble. The polemics is further underscored in Man of Iron where Maciej’s dissident

activities are emphasised by the brief presence of the real dissident, Lech Walesa, on screen.

Before Wojciech Jaruzelski, Polish military leader and later President, had imposed martial law

Solidarity was already interacting with the different forces of Catholic-conservatism and

liberalism within it. It ushered in market forces that paradoxically also affected the fulcrum of

the labouring collective. However, Solidarity was, in terms of principles, a democratic

movement, a bold anti-regime assertion. Man of Marble tries to delineate the existing discontent

and the social fabric that was to witness the massive action of dissidence that led to the formation

of Solidarity which re-asserted the basic rights of the workers that Communism initially

advocated.

The communist phenomena in Poland and the other East-bloc countries used an

expedient democratic shimmer for their authoritarianism. The absolutist societies try to extend

their control to all channels of political socialization including the academy. The second

sequence of Man of Marble is a very long take of Agnieszka and her supervisor walking down

the corridor of the film institute. They are in serious disagreement over the choice of subject for

the diploma film Agnieszka is to make. Immediately the film is located in a political space that

demands silence. The supervisor warns Agnieszka that her diploma project deals with too

controversial a subject and it could mean ‘the end’ for both of them. Nevertheless, the young

filmmaker remains determined to complete her project. The supervisor is assimilated into the

establishment and speaks from a certain position. Agnieszka, on the other hand, wishes to

traverse territories that would allow her to question the existing ideology and learn the truth. Her

quest to find Birkut becomes an instance of ‘living in truth’.

The quest to re-establish a former hero, now fallen in grace, begins at the museum, the

ideal location of preserving human memory through artefacts which are primarily visual objects.

Even there, the state tampers with memory and permits the display of those objects that suit its

ideology and propaganda. The statue of Mateusz Birkut is discarded into a storage room that is

restricted to all including the filmmaker. However, Agnieszka and her crew manage to get shots

of the statue. The narrative is constructed in a manner so as to break the imposed obstructions to

uncover the truth, in this instance the reality about Birkut.

The filmic text is structured so as to unfold in two different spaces within the larger

framework of the film itself. Agnieszka’s making of her film is shown with Birkut’s story, his

struggles and final disillusionment. The parallel narratives are undercut by black and white

archival sequences showcasing Birkut’s moments of glory and method of glorification. The cult

of Birkut was initiated by another ambitious filmmaker (Bruski). Birkut was used along with his

friends to stage a grand spectacle of proletarian effort and fortitude. Agnieszka meets this

filmmaker years later to discuss the film he had made years ago. This interview and the other

conversations that follow become exercises in memory and an effort towards the retrieval of an

undocumented past that is counter-history.

The first sequence of Man of Marble is a collage of black and white images of

Birkut’s life transposed with images gesturing towards Stalinist realism. The political space is

clearly established when the viewer is confronted with a colossal and intrusive portrait of Stalin

in a communist parade. The other shots are of Birkut as the new icon of the communist

government. The Stalin portrait in a Polish film also hints at the power relations that existed

between Soviet Russia and its allies where U.S.S.R was the leading nation with its appendages.

Next, the film cuts to the present and the sequence is shot in colour.

Man of Marble progresses at an accelerated pace. Its momentum never relaxes. A sense

of relentless movement prevails right from the beginning to the concluding shots of the film.

Agnieszka is relentless in her pursuit of Birkut, who appears to have disappeared from history,

driven as it were by an apprehension that the final memories might perish unrecorded. She is

able to get interviews from individuals once intimately associated with Birkut. The effort is

directed towards rupturing the silence and recovering speech. The different individuals whom

Agnieszka meets during her filming break that silence by speaking about a past involving a

controversial issue. However, the sense of fear dominates the fabric of this discourse. A certain

character, who was acquainted with Birkut during his rebellious days, speaks with hesitancy. He

demands the tape back when he learns that his words were being recorded without permission. In

the process Agnieszka learns the truth but the information remains undocumented. This

particular interview reveals not only a desire to speak but also an inner resistance to that speech

for fear of the state.

Free speech becomes an important icon in the film. Agnieszka speaks to different

individuals during her journey and is not always successful in her endeavours. Birkut interrupts a

party meeting to expose the corruption of the acting unit there, only to have his microphone

disconnected. However Birkut’s continued resistance in the given situation is suppressed by the

officials of the party who rise and engage the collective into a community song that is more of a

chant of affirmation. The voice of truth is silenced by the overwhelming majority. Wajda maybe

hinting that mobilising the collective, even if it is a disgruntled collective is not easy. The voice

of conviction that infuses a particular character ( Birkut) may not filter down to all. Man of Iron

completes the trajectory initiated in Man of Marble that depicts the mass uprising of at the

Gsdnak shipyards.

In the opening collage of black and white shots, one particular shot shows Birkut

speaking from a podium. The interruption of free speech becomes the focus here. In its absence

there is a disintegration of communication. The state directs the channels and methods of

communication and srutinises the flow of information in every section of the political society. In

other words, the Polish state became a totalitarian state to be questioned by dissidents

functioning in Warsaw Pact east-bloc alliance ceated post-second world war.

Dissidence is counter-discourse, often illegal and legitimate at the same time. A

dissident existence can also transform itself into the establishment. The dissident Bolsheviks of

1914 themselves replaced the Tsarist rule to encounter the dissidence of Samizdat literature. In

addition, the Warsaw Pact countries had to countenance the collective impact of Charter 77 and

Solidarity that also witnessed the rise of Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa. It marked the beginning

of the dismantling of the Soviet empire.

The Anti-politicians of Eastern Europe practiced a dissidence of their own. They

stressed on the preservation of the ethical self of the individual and a complete dissociation from

the self that thrives on dominion and power, a theoretical position that calls to mind the

migrating Greek politician in The Suspended Steps of the Stork who renounces the political for

the ethical. However, the political and the ethical need not be two disjunctured elements, but an

inclusive complex. Politics embodies an ethic and social purpose which cannot be reduced to

sociology.2 Therefore, what is political, permeates to the moral consciousness and is expressed

through literature, cinema and other arts. The attempt is not just to expose but also to record,

remember, preserve the memory for humanity, as a moral duty to those who suffered. Therefore

there are books like One day in the Life of Ivan Denosovich of Solzenitsyn recording the

2? Crick, Bernad. In Defence of Politics. Pg 177

dehumanisation and repression at soviet labour camps; and Night of Elie Wiesel documenting the

horrors of the Nazi concentration camp.

Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble works within a society that prefers an established

mode discourse, a Marxist-Leninist ideology as interpreted by the State. The self-reflexivity that

operates within the structure of the text is also an appeal to engage in intrapersonal reflection

within a repressive society. Man of Marble is a film about a film. It offers unique perspectives on

the potentials and the vissititudes of historical antagonism in Poland that affects individuals

within that framework. These parameters extend from the parameters of cinema to the domains

of history itself. Agnieszka, a filmmaker struggles to complete a film about a fallen Proletarian

hero, Birkut who was elevated to that status through propaganda. Birkut is erased from memory

because he refuses to change with the system that is caught in a vicious cycle of secrecy,

corruption and exploitation. The absurdity and the structural inadequacies of the Communist

government in Eastern Europe is well depicted in Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum where the

pretentions to strict rationality become grossly absurd. Truth triumphs, but only briefly, being

inescapably caught in the irrationality of the system. Birkut is forgotten because he speaks

against that system. Erasure from memory is an archetypal punishment for those who refuse to

conform to the ideology of the establishment. The Czech writer Milan Kundera’s novel The Book

of Laughter and Forgetting deals with a similar theme especially the first section called ‘Lost

Letters’. There, a photograph is doctored to remove a certain individual from the frame

altogether. Jehovah commanded his faithful angels to remove from the Book of Life, the names

of rebel angels. The same happens to Volodin in The First Circle. A diplomat of the Stalinist

regime, he is erased for what the establishment considers a transgression and a threat. In Man of

Marble there is an attempt to revive such a memory, a memory that the State has relegated to

oblivion, hence the conflict. The demands made on the filmmaker are moral, more than anything.

The quest to find Birkut becomes an ethical quest to re-establish in the society’s Book of Life a

memory that a tyrannical State demands all to forget. Significantly, in the film, the archival shot-

sequences capturing the removal of Birkut’s portrait is categorised as subversive material. The

filmmaker’s decision to use the counter-discursive elements undercut the narrative which

remains tantalisingly poised on the verge of an open declaration of dissidence. This periphery is

not adhered to in Man of Iron which directly addresses the alternative discourse attacking

governmental corruption and absolutism.

The dissident, in privileging the ideology of the dominated incurs the peril of turning

propagandist. Wajda accentuates the Solidarity ideology and the character of Maciej is

reminiscent of Lech Walesa. As one structure replaces another it remains in the danger of

succumbing to the weaknesses of the system it replaced. That vista of reasoning inaugurates a

different discourse altogether questioning the significance of revolutions and adopted methods of

change.

The fact of dissidence originates from a deep moral authority underscoring truth and a

sense of moral purpose. The dissident does not operate from the premise of power, rather, is a

fledgling centre of counter-energies. The dissident’s position remains precarious, testing the

limits of the state’s tolerance, especially a state that doctors and fabricates alternative memories.

Vaclav Havel, the dissident writer of Poland articulates his understanding of the dissident in

“The Power of the Powerless”:

“You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual

career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex

set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position

of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded

an enemy of society.”  

 The dilemma he refers to operates within the existing framework, as it remains poised for

transformation, in Poland’s instance, from atheistic communist socio-political order to a

Catholic-conservative-neo-liberal order.   This situation reminds one of Ibsen’s play “An Enemy

of the People” where a single individual stands up to the corrupt nature of the political system

asserting the right to speak the truth in the face of social intolerance.3

The dissident’s ideology, by itself a reaction or a response to the establishment,

either establishes a structure of its own or reinvents other existing discourses for its purpose. The

repressive state responds to this argument by targeting iconic figures of the dissidence and then

discrediting them. Birkut, in Man of Marble, initially a creation of the state, was disgraced

because he dared to question of socialist egalitarianism as construed by the state. Therefore he is

designated a persona non grata and later shot down by the police as is presumed by the

references in the next film Man of Iron. The refusal to conform to the state’s practices of

expediency and the desire to remain uncompromising with the individual’s principles is a trait

that the dissident imbibes. In the film, Birkut though restricted by the exigencies of his political

situation, preserves his ethical self, trying to preserve its un-corruptedness. In extreme cases the

3 The protagonist Dr Stockmann becomes the lone voice of truth in the situation where the state and the masss collaborate and participate in the monstrous fabrication of untruth. The play ends with a memorable quote uttered by Dr Stockmann “…the strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.”

dissident is either liquidated or is compelled to re-locate himself to an alien space. Solzenitsyn,

for instance, was made to go in exile. Agnieszka’s project is abruptly terminated in the film and

in Man of Iron Maciej has to countenance the ideologically grounded legal system.

Communist Eastern Europe created societies that stifled the individual for sake of a

collective that ultimately became a metaphor for the state itself. The state remained

unaccountable to the citizen and active participation of the citizens was replaced by a loyalty to

party and the society. In Man of Marble Wajda depicts this situation. The party cadres enjoy the

benefits of party favours. They are comfortable and supported by the system while others do not

fare so well. The dissident questions this situation and suggests a practicable solution. He is not

revolutionary in the traditional sense of the term. Vaclav Havel evaluates the situation in his

document ‘Power of the Powerless’:

“Given the complexity of modern social structures, power cannot be eliminated, just as the

state form of the social organization cannot be done away with. But the political power , the

highest form of decision-making power, must be prevented, both through law and through

‘power’, from becoming totally concentrated in a single place. One constant task, therefore, will

be to control, limit and criticize power, to make it practically impossible for power to grow to

suffocating proportions.”

The dissident seeks to create a position where the powers of the government are defined and

delimited through effective mechanisms, perhaps through legal systems. Havel talks of ‘parallel

structures’, a parallel political life represented by parallel political structures. These structures

are represented by ‘dissident’ movements’ that create a parallel political life, a parallel polis.

Dissidence concentrates into a threatening stance only if the state is reactionary and

ideologically static. The state responds by terminating the concrete manifestations of that

discourse. It resorts to arrests, show trials, deportations, even executions.). Agnieszka’s show of

dissidence is considered seriously by the institution. She is punished by a forced termination of

her project. The Polish authority refuses to allow the completion of a text that is critical of its

ideology and dissident in its tones. In this case it acts through the adademy. The suppression was

only a natural reaction on part of a government that subordinates civil rights to discipline. The

revolutionary government thus failed in its evdeavour in Eastern Europe; a failure that was part

of the Bolshevik tradition. To quote Hannah Arendt form On Revolution in the chapter ‘The

Revolutionary Tradition and its Lost Treasure’:

“When the communists decided in 1919, ‘to espouse only the cause of a communist majority,

they actually behaved like ordinary party politicians. So great is the fear of men, even of the

most radical and least conventional of them, of things never seen, of thoughts, of institutions

never tried before.”

Wajda’s Man of Marble illustrates this reality through a sequence when Birkut

goes to meet a bureaucrat with his friend. After an indefinite wait, the two are given permission

to enter. The next scene cuts to the office where Birkut is found straddled between the bureaucrat

and his secretary. His friend simply vanishes from the setting in the next second. Queries about

him are vaguely answered or not attended to. The show trial convicts the man who later refutes

the ideological affinities he initially shares with Birkut to collaborate with the system, becoming

an important bureaucrat himself. The trajectory of Man of Marble and especially Man of Iron

Poland show a valiant attempt to return the unnatural gaze and oppressive politicisation of the

state with dissidence. The Prague Spring of 1968, Charter 77 and Solidarity testify to that.

Dissidence in Eastern Europe began as a reaction to communist stifling of civil liberties in the

post-war period. In another of Wajda’s films The Danton Affair the character Delacroix reflects

in prison, “Man has rights as long as he knows how to preserve them.” Wajda’s efforts have been

directed towards the chronicling of the growth of free ideas in his native land, not always with

the support of the authorities and not always with joy.4

The group of countries in Communist Eastern Europe inaugurated a novel chapter of citizen-

state interchange, creating a divide in Europe. Churchill’s much advertised words:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the

Continent”

became the defining parameter for this phenomenon that created the two Europes, as it were.

One was styled the free, democratic, world. The was other a communist coterie with an entirely

different idea of democracy (which, at least theoretically translates as ‘Dictatorship of the

Proletariat’). This is the context within which Man of Marble is located.

The citizens reacted to this political situation in Eastern Europe. Joseph Zverina in his

essay “On not Living in Hatred” observes:

44 Man of Heart: Andrzej Wajda, by Gideon Bachmann and Andrzej WajdaFilm Quarterly. Vol.36, No. 2 (Winter 1982-1983), pp2-5

“Unhappily, when the post-war psychosis and passion had died down, hate was once more

whipped up and fostered by the socialist governments […] Hate became an instrument of

political power – particularly after 1948 […] There can be no worse threat than this to human

morality and life […] The education of people into a single permitted ideology creates a much

more extensive basis for such a hatred.” As a solution for such a situation Zverina suggests that

the only real power is the ‘power’ of the powerless. ‘The powerless have no power either

because they have lost it or because their internal make-up never allowed them to serve it[…]But

they are strong. They do not conquer the earth, nor dominate it, but instead shall transform it into

a heritage for humanity.”

Poland became the first country to effectively engage the government through

negotiation to yield its position. Man of Marble hints at this situation. The final sequence of the

film terminates rather suggestively at the Gdnask shipyards where Agnieszka is able to locate

Birkut’s son. The shipyards become part of the iconography that Wajda explores in the film. It

forms the site of the dissidence that would alter Polish national history. The film pays homage to

Solidarity. It is well constructed with definite markers of dissidence. The subtext of dissidence

complements the film and what it tries to do in terms of making an investigation into the Polish

state during the communist rule. Part of this is achieved in the film through the dialogues of

exchange that engages with history and memory.

Agnieszka converses with Bruski, the director of the films she has seen. The sequence

portrays Bruski (played by Andrzej Lomnicki) as director of a film about Birkut. Bruski is a well

established artistic personality living in a villa. Agnieszka does fit in the ambience of luxury and

comfort that Bruski resides in. The difference in class and status are demonstrated by

Agnieszka’s manner of conducting herself, her lack of material possessions and finally

established by the decrepit, neglected living apartment of her father. Class differences, though

officially absent in Communist Poland was nevertheless present in a society where the

distribution of power and wealth were no longer dependent on family backgroung or material

assets but on the ranks in the party and the relation with party officials. As a consequence of this

power structure the representative of the artistic circles could compromise on his or her artistic

autonomy for party favours.5 Wajda touches upon a significant element of the effect of the

communist regime in Poland here, namely the relation of this new state vis-à-vis art. In fact art

forms an important part of the discourse in the filmic text. The title itself is a reference to a an

art form, a structure in marble, not made with any artistic vision in mind but simply to propagate

an ideology. Man of Marble becomes an art form that refuses to conform to that idea. It is self-

reflexive and self-referential in its engagement with art forms. It shows how art is being

unscrupulously used for purposes of political interest and presumably the artistic autonomy that

is being violated.

Another important iconographical element is the fallen statue. A statue, (Birkut’s in

this context), is sculpted with artistic endeavour, not only to pay homage to, but also to reinforce

an ideology. Its removal signifies an act of violence directed at the person as well as the ideas

and an attitude of life. The fragments of Lenin’s gigantic statue in Ulysses Gaze signify the end

of an era. The removal of Birkut’s statue showed the state’s desire to end a kind of dialogue he

was trying to initiate, the dialogue of criticism, which could be interpreted as dissidence. 5 Falkowska, Janina. The Political films of Andrzej Wajda: Dialogism in Man of Marble, Man of Iron and Danton. Berghnhn, Oxford. 1996, pp 68

His statue is not destroyed, but kept in a state of neglect. The two forms of archival

elements supplement each other, the film records and the museum pieces. The film records are

said to be retrieved from restricted sections. Agnieszka uses them for her project and recovers a

sequence of film that shows Birkut’s portrait being taken down. There is the fallen statue as well

as the fallen portrait. Yet Birkut remains ideologically uncorrupted. He remains true to his ideals,

never compromising on his principles. Jerzy Radziwilowicz’s portrayal of Birkut depicts him as

a man with an almost an Edenic innocence reflected his eyes.

Wajda shows the communist dreams and then their disintrgration in the socio-

economic set-up. The song of integration sung by Birkut and his fellow-workers in the train is an

instance of the fraternal and humanist appeal of Marxist thought that Communism attempted to

imbibe and practice. They refer to an international community that includes ‘brothers’ form

different parts of the world (including Africa and Asia). Birkut is shown to believe in that dream.

Birkut initially participates in the functioning of the system. The film opens with a

song of affirmation created by the establishment, a chant of several voices against which the first

black and white shots of Birkut are placed. The final scene, which mirrors the initial sequences,

is also a very long take of Agnieszka and Maciej walking down the corridor of the institution

which is an embodiment of the establishment. Wajda mixes the theme music which begins as the

credits roll with the social chant of unity that plays in the background as the film opens.

Incidentally the two elements are opposed to each other. The music played as the credits roll

portrays dissidents in the background. It begins playing as Agnieszka raises her fist at the

concrete structure of the institute in a gesture of defiance. The other is a chant of affirmation,

reflecting a faith the communist government’s structuring of society. It plays in the background

of the Birkut films of Bruski and is sung by the party workers when Birkut’s protest is put down.

The two elements merge. It not only gives an indication of Maciej’s lecagy but also of the

dissidence that would evolve and entrench itself in the next film.

The film depicts different aspects of the governmental corruption. It shows

courtroom trials, the voting procedures, and refers to Birkut’s denunciation by his own wife.

The elaborate courtroom sequence shot in black and white reveals the corruption of the

governmental machinery and the judiciary. The charges appear more as accusations without

basis. Wajda creates the closed space of the courtroom, depicts the activity of trial and the

absurdity of the system. Perhaps out of considerations of comradeship, Birkut confesses to the

charges convicting his friend. His friend receives an acquittal while Birkut is sentenced. Birkut is

marked by his experience when he returns and grows suspicious of the personality worship he is

subjected to. The elevation of Birkut to the position of a communist hero is also a coded

representation. It is of course a part of governmental propaganda. The media and the state

become active collaborators in creating the illusion of an egalitarian, just society that

acknowledges and honours the working class and is a humanitarian, rational institution. The

creation of Birkut’s new status is also a comment on the cult of personality worship initiated and

practiced by the Commmunist leaders especially Stalin. Stalin actively promoted the cult of

personality worship and erected colossal statues of himself. Birkut is also shown to pay tribute to

his own statue by laying flowers. Wajda could have shown that corruption of the person (Birkut)

due to the creation of the new personality (communist hero). However he chooses to preserve the

ethical purity of his character. The title refers to the propagandist marble statues made in Birkut’s

image.

Wajda takes the viewer through the different stages of the formation of the

personality cult. The conception of the idea, in this case lay with the party cadre and the

filmmaker. The filmmaker wanted to shoot something spectacular, a feat of human labour that

would correspond well with the dominating ideology of the state. Birkut was created as the hero-

bricklayer of Nowa Huta. He is feted, given access to certain political circles. Birkut is shown to

be a man with faith in the socialist ideology and the egalitarian society that socialism promised to

deliver. The state tolerates him only to an extent when his tone about the state becomes critical.

Wajda embeds Agnieszka’s journey with Birkut’s life and some sequences shot in black and

white. These sections are archival films, some of them censored by the state.

The self-reflexivity portayed in the film is functions in layers. The superstructure of

reality in this context is the film Man of Marble by Wajda. It shows the making of another film,

Agnieszka’s, basing itself on interviews and other archival film resources. Then there is the

filmmaker who created the image of Birkut-the proletarian hero and his film. This is a

propagandist film and depicts the glory of Nowa Huta, the city that was being built by the

workers, of whom Birkut was one. The recreation of the film of the 1950’s, which the woman

shows to Agnieszka dialogically involves the spectator in generating meanings in the given

cultural and historical context. In particular the scene that shows the workers competing for food

becomes part of a discourse on a similar scene in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) which

also featured workers’ distrust of authorities. Huge paintings of prominent workers and the

statues of marble explore a historical area that incorporated the machinery of Stalinist

propaganda. Then it follows his visits to museums where he is said to scorn at the western-

bourgeois art. The state becomes an arbiter in everything including the appreciation of art.

The film that Bruski makes about Birkut looks at only one aspect of the debate.

Perhaps the communist state was still in its embryonic stage and the aspirations were still not

ruptured by the fact of disillusionment, or it was simply propaganda. Agnieszka’s film on the

other hand is strongly critical of the state and the way it uses individuals for sake of expediency.

Therefore there are three films, the final framework being Wajda’s. The discourse of dissidence

in the film within the film uses documentary footage. Agniesaka’s film is a documentary that

tries to establish a particular viewpoint which is a dissident one. This stance unnerves her

supervisor who terminates her incomplete project by taking away the crew and resources

provided. Nevertheless Anieszka remains determined to complete her project is able to

communicate, if not with Birkut, but with one who carries his legacy, Maciej. It recalls the anti-

politicians of Eastern Europe, dissidents, whose method of opposition was a complete

dissociation from politics that is a corrupted existence in itself. The film becomes assertion of

revolutionary principles that persist even in conditions that demand a compromise. It is taken to

understand that Birkut was shot by the Polish secret police at the shipyards. In the final

sequences the film becomes overt in paying tribute to Solidarity. The camera glides across

different sections of the shipyard panning across its stretches and recording long shots of the

space, its different aspects. Stylistically the scenes are well crafted with Wajda capturing the

machinery and the pictersque aspects of the shipyard.

The location of Maciej in the given space, physical, political and familial is

established within a span of a few minutes. His physical appearance becomes the keynote factor

in this identification (Wajda casts Jerzy Radziwilowicz in both the roles). The camera focuses on

him as he enters the shipyard and zooms out to establish the vast space of the shipyard and then

depicts the different aspects of it

Man of Marble depicts Polish historical memory with aesthetics that relies more on

suggestiveness. The filmic construction suggests a subtext that is coded into the film. It

dramatizes the political tensions that led to the formation of Solidairty in the 1970’s. Wajda’s

film centers on two individuals, one a director and dissident (Agnieszka) and the other, (Birkut),

a disillusioned believer who retains faith in the Socialist principles, though not in the system.

The film functions within its own aesthetics to present the fact of totalitarian repression. It is a

comment on Socialist Realism. The dissidence in the film is the voice of counter argument, even

of counter- history. It questions the regime and expresses an affirmation in the dissident’s ability

to uncover and communicate the truth.

Bibliography

Haclav Havel et al, The Power of the Powerless. Edited by

Hannah Arendt, On Revolution

Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down : The Collapse of Communism in

Eastern Europe.

Falkowska, Janina. The Political films of Andrzej Wajda: Dialogism in Man of

Marble, Man of Iron and Danton.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

Vaclav Havel, Selected Plays

Henrik Ibsen, Selected Plays

Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics

European Cinema

Mid-Term Assignment

Dissidence in Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble

Debasmita Biswas

Second Semester

H-710