KATYN

Famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda's Oscar-nominated film Katyn is a movie of great importance with a super-powerful climax... but is otherwise muddled, disjointed, and rather uninvolving.

Spanning from 1939 until after the World War II when the Soviets occupy Poland, Katyn follows several characters including a Polish general, an officer, a pilot, and the families/sisters/children that are left behind. The film's emotional climax, shown in flashback, is of course the slaughter of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals in the forest of Katyn in 1940 by the Soviets. However, none of the many characters are explored with very much depth, and it doesn't help that some are children at the start of the film and are adults at the end. As is often the case of films portraying nation-scarring moments of extreme tragedy (the first that comes to mind is Oliver Stone's equally disappointing World Trade Center), the film treads almost too carefully, and in the process holds us at hesitant arms' length.

But, unsurprisingly, the last 10 or 20 minutes (which re-enact the massacre in Katyn itself) are as shocking and unbearable as can be expected, and these moments pack 10 times more emotion than the rest of the film. The victims face their fates methodically, which is horrifying and chilling. It is so jarring, it almost makes you forget how the rest of the film is uninvolving and undeserving of such a powerful conclusion.

After the massacre of 12,000 officers, scientists, intellectuals, and artists in the forest of Katyn was discovered, the Soviets turned the "official" blame on the Nazis when the war ended, literally rewriting history. The event has chilled relations between the two countries ever since, even after communism collapsed, as Russia still has not issued an official apology. This important and tragic event in Poland's history is definitely worthy of an epic, emotionally wrenching film, but alas this film of Katyn just isn't the classic that it strives to be.