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MovieMail's Review
Andrzej Wajda built his reputation on the back of probing and impassioned recreations of Polish history, but with Man of Iron he went one better. By filming on location at the Gdansk shipyard during the 1980 strike and interspersing his fictional characters with real-life Solidarity heroes (Lech Walesa himself pops up as a wedding guest), the film doubles as a valuable snapshot of the mindset of the time, its triumphant conclusion tragically undermined by the military crackdown just a few months after its Palme d'Or-winning triumph at Cannes.
Aware that he had to work unusually quickly in order to seize the moment, Wajda resurrected characters from his earlier Man of Marble, including Krystyna Janda's filmmaker turned political dissident Agnieszka, and Jerzy Radziwilowicz's Solidarity activist Tomczyk.
But the film's real star, a potent metaphor for the ordinary Pole caught between government and an unprecedentedly popular mass movement, is Marian Opalnia as the weaselly journalist Winkel, initially hired by the authorities to dig dirt on the strikers but realising that their cause is too powerful to oppose.
Regarded as one of the most important films ever to come out of Poland, the Palme d'Or winning Man of Iron is Andrzej Wajda's final and most moving film regarding the Solidarity Movement and its struggles to gain recognition in its native country.
Following on from Man of Marble, Man of Iron continues the story of Maciej Tomczyk, a young worker involved in the anti-Communist labour movement. The ruling regime sends an alcoholic hack to dig the dirt on the shipyard strikes, and particularly on Tomczyk, who has become an inspirational figure. Posing as a sympathiser to the cause, the journalist interviews people who know Tomczyk in an effort to undermine the growing support for the movement.
The film uses actual news footage of the 1968 and 1970 protests and of the birth of Solidarity, which it interweaves throughout the stories of a son coming to terms with his father, a couple falling in love, a reporter searchjing for courage and a nation undergoing historic change.
