Andrzej Wajda: History, Politics, and Nostalgia in Polish Cinema by Janina FalkowskaReview by: Ewa MazierskaSlavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), pp. 1003-1004Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27653048 .

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Book Reviews 1003

Andrzej Wajda: History, Politics, and Nostalgia in Polish Cinema. By Janina Falkowska. New

York: Berghahn Books, 2007. viii, 340 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Filmography. Illustrations. Photographs. $85.00, hard bound.

Among numerous books devoted to Andrzej Wajda, published in Poland and abroad,

Janina Falkowska's monograph stands out as the most comprehensive and, consequently, the most ambitious. It aims to cover all of Wajda's films against the wide background of

Polish history and culture and, albeit to a lesser extent, the history of eastern Europe and

aesthetic trends in European cinema. Moreover, it attempts to unmask the director's ar

tistic method, establishing how much Wajda's films are really his own and to what extent

they are the product of his collaboration with other artists. Such a question is worth ask

ing in light of the fact that the director of Popi?l i diament (Ashes and diamonds, 1958),

despite his unquestionable reputation as the best known Polish film auteur, differs from

the bulk of directors enjoying this status by not writing his own scripts. Falkowska claims

that, although Wajda had at his disposal the best crew one could find in Poland, he is "both

master and commander" (4), having the last word in all decisions involved in making his

films. Consequently, Wajda can be seen as "one of the greatest independent filmmakers

in the world" (5). Finally, she sheds light on his private

life and persona, both for the sake

of satisfying our curiosity about who Wajda is as a private person and to add additional

context to his work.

Andrzej Wajda is organized chronologically, beginning with Wajda's films of the 1950s

and finishing with those made in the new century. Moving through the decades, Falkowska

tries to pinpoint the consistent motifs in his films and account for the changes in his artis

tic output. The overall impression is of a filmmaker immensely preoccupied with the past

and present of his country, but also of a multimedia artist who paints and works in theater;

an erudite individual interested in other cultures, such as those of Russia and Japan; and a

filmmaker able to cross national boundaries, both in the sense of accommodating foreign

inventions in his films and engaging in international coproductions.

Falkowska does not

allow any rigid theory to bind her hands and instead attempts to tailor her methods to

her material. Nevertheless, one feels she is most comfortable when dealing with the most

political films of the "middle period"

of Wajda's career, such as Czlowiek z marmaru (Man of

marble, 1977) and Danton (1983) where, consequently, politics is the main lens through

which to look at his films. On the whole, for any lecturer or student doing a course in

Polish or east central European cinema, as well as any fan of Wajda's films, this book is a

must.

This does not mean that Falkowska's book will satisfy every reader, however. Some

might find her discussion slightly boring or

repetitive. This impression results chiefly from

Wajda's being so prolific. On some occasions, the descriptions of the films seem to over

shadow the analysis and assessments of the director's oeuvre. Although these descriptions

undoubtedly help illuminate Falkowska's points and are useful for readers, especially those

less familiar with Wajda's work, the book would have had a better flow if these descriptions

had been presented in a separate section of the book.

Other readers, like myself, who, while acknowledging that Wajda occupies a special

place in Polish cinema and culture, do not regard him as the greatest in the sense of being

the most original or creating the largest number of masterpieces, might regard Falkowska's

book as too sympathetic to her subject. This sympathy is conveyed, for example, by her

use of extensive quotes from Wajda when assessing the aesthetic value and political im

portance of his films. With works widely regarded as Wajda's greatest achievements, this

approach may be acceptable, but when she moves to what many of his fellow countrymen

regard as his "cinematic disasters,"such as Panna Nikt (Miss Nobody, 1996) or Pierscionek z

orlem w koronie (The ring with a crowned eagle, 1993), I find Falkowska's evaluations too

polite and insensitive to some very interesting criticism voiced by the then young critics,

such as Andrzej Horubala's review of The Ring with a Crowned Eagle in Kino magazine, which

I remember as a cultural event virtually in its own right. The very title "Grande Finale,"

given to her chapter devoted to the postcommunist period in Wajda's career, strikes me as

rather inadequate, even in light of Wajda's

own admission that during this period he lost

his talent and his audience.

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1004 Slavic Review

In Falkowska's defense, it has to be said that she does not hide her great admiration

for Wajda, and not only for his films, but for him as a person whom she had the pleasure to meet on a number of occasions and with whom she corresponded. Moreover, one aim

of her project, which draws heavily on Wajda's Krakow archives, is to capture the "artist's

mind," to be the artist's biographer. On the whole, even for those who would prefer a different approach, this book con

stitutes an excellent starting point and for this reason cannot be ignored.

Ewa Mazierska

University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom

Mythistory and Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans. Ed. Tatjana Aleksic. Newcastle, Eng.:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. vii, 234 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustra

tions. Photographs. $79.99, hard bound.

Tatjana Aleksic in her introduction gives a clear statement about the scope and focus of the articles collected in this volume. They are concerned with "the national question and its narrative representations" (2) in Balkan literatures at certain crucial moments. Aleksic

guides her reader through the pitfalls of writing about literary representations of the na tion. She emphasizes that the essays here drive a

wedge between the purely historical and the purely mythic camps: "The choice of the term

mythistory in defining nationalist narra tives in general, as well as those discussed in this collection, is based on the impossibility of

delineating a clear-cut distinction between the historical as opposed to the mythological

origins of nations" (3). The volume contains ten essays that reflect on material taken from Albanian, Bos

nian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, and Serbian sources. The analyses focus mainly on lit

erary texts and feature films, although there are substantial references to memoirs, oral folk poetry, political speeches, and the pronouncements of intellectuals from the Balkan countries. Some attention is also given to real structures, particularly bridges, in addition to their counterparts in Balkan fictional worlds. The primary material is varied and prom ises a broad insight into a

particular problem. The variety of methodological approaches, theoretical frameworks, and topics presented here do not cohere, however, and they fail to offer any mutual illumination of the issues in question.

The best articles are those that concentrate on a particular text, rather than aiming for a comparative study. Jessie Labov approaches the Leksikon Yu mitologije from different

perspectives, offering alternative ways of reading the work, tweaking out its value as a col lection of memories, emphasizing Yugoslavia as a state of mind that the Leksikon constantly reconstructs. Julia Musha examines Ismail Kadare's views on Albanian European identity in the context of current debates within the country and includes his references to these issues in his novel The Three-Arched Bridge. Artemis Leontis writes about the bridge at Arta

as a real piece of architecture, as a historic event with a symbolic presence, and in rela

tion to the ballad The Bridge of Arta. Marinos Pourgouris analyzes the film Ulysses' Gaze for its parallel structure to the myth of Odysseus, linking the mythic world to

contemporary concerns over the state of the Balkans.

The appearance of this collection of essays is timely. It almost seems that a Balkan aca demic industry has appeared in recent times with a focus on problems of national identity and the ethics of ethnic politics. In the humanities there is a current

imperative to find these issues expressed in the cultures of the region, for which a number of reasons can

be cited: publishers want to maximize sales; other disciplines are not interested in literary studies that focus on the art of a text; public interest in the Balkans was revived because of a fascination with war and violence. These concerns raise a

problem. Only a short distance separates notions of culture in the abstract from the real people who live in the society

producing that culture. There is an uncomfortable sense that we may be complicit in cre

ating a link that may not exist. Perhaps we should focus more on the particular method of semantic production in complex literary texts where meanings are not

directly con nected to real events

including analysis of the codes and conventions specific to the writing

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