Polish Films of the Postwar Period

Ashes and Diamonds

The Polish film Ashes and Diamonds, set during the waning days of World War II chronicles the attempt of a Home Army Polish soldiers named Maciek to assassinate a communist government official named Commissar Szczuka. Although today a viewer might be tempted to immediately side with the anticommunist Home Army, the film is riddled with moral ambiguities and neither man is clearly a hero or a villain. Commissar Szczuka's wife was killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp and he was a freedom fighter against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He is worried about his son, who, contrary to his father's politics, opposes communism and is being detained by the Russians. Maciek likewise is an ambiguous figure: he does not really revel in violence, although circumstances have forced him to play a violent role.

Both men, despite the political tide which tears them apart, are sympathetic on a personal level. Maciek seeks a different way of life when he falls in love with the barmaid Krystyna, who he compares to a diamond in the ashes (hence the title of the film). The film thus suggests that while political circumstances can propel people to violent actions, at heart most people are compassionate and desire happiness. Szczuka is always thinking of his son and his eagerness to see his son at the end of the film causes him to walk unattended in the darkness, straight into the barrel of the gun held by Maciek. The younger and older men become dangerous to one another, given the polarized struggle they are grappling with in the wake of the post-World War II expansion of the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union and the rise of anti-communism in opposition to that influence in Poland.

The film continually pairs scenes of love and death: for example, Maciek unintentionally kills two men at the beginning of the film when he is trying to assassinate Szczuka. After sleeping with Krystyna and walking around in a church with her as they discuss and reflect upon life, he finds himself faced with the image of these two men in their crypt, where they have been buried. Maciek is trapped in a world not of his own making: he does not seem to be innately violent, but he feels he has no choice. He tries to leave the resistance, but eventually capitulates and shoots Szczuka, after several tense minutes in which he paces back and forth, obviously not wanting to carry out the task. At the very end, Maciek is killed as well by the Polish Army. Both protagonists on either side of the divide of the warring ideologies competing for domination in the wreckage of Poland cannot live another day to enjoy their personal lives but are rather killed as a result of an inhuman focus on ideology, not by their own free will.

Ashes and Diamonds does not take an explicit stance in favor of either the communists or those who are resisting them. During World War II, Maciek and Szczuka were on the same side of the issue of Polish freedom. Both wanted the Nazis expelled from their land. However, now the nation is divided. Members of the 'Home Army' like Maciek are determined to expel any communist influence; Szczuka believes that communism is the only sure antidote to fascism. Both men operate out of a belief that they are doing what is good for Poland, but the war turns all men into monsters -- Maciek is turned into a murderer and Szczuka before his death is unwittingly complicit with the destructive increase of Soviet influence in Poland.

The film suggests that regardless of whether someone is right or wrong, when an action is precipitated with violence, destruction and evil arises. Maciek is clearly a good and sensitive man but when forced into the role of assassin he cannot help but act evilly and his actions result in mass casualties even before he assassinates Szczuka. He would clearly rather have a normal, loving life with a girlfriend but the circumstances around him do not permit him to make this choice. Szczuka is also bigger than the ideology he represents: he genuinely loves his son, even though his son is politically opposed to all he stands for as a politician. All of the characters are caught up in a wheel of history from which they cannot extract themselves.

If Maciek and Szczuka met under different circumstances, it is hard not to believe that they might not be friends. Szczuka's own son is arrested because the boy's sympathies are close to Maciek's and he still loves the boy. However, once Maciek has committed himself to the assassination, he cannot go back. Without the support of the resistance group of which he is a part, he has nowhere to go. He is trapped by fate and circumstances larger than himself just as much as Szczuka.