Man of Marble (Czlowiek z Marmuru) (1977)

 

Marmormanden

The List is not exactly swarmed with Polish movies, but those there have a remarkably high quality, if not in production value, then in idea. “Man of Marble” (“Człowiek z marmuru”) lands well and safely in this category.

It is a story-within-a-story movie about a young modern filmmaker (Krystyna Janda as Agnieszka) who is trying to tell the story of one Mateusz Birkut (Jerzy Radziwiłowicz), a socialist hero from the early fifties who since vanished. As she dives into the story she realize there are hidden layers and a lot of false layers to uncover. As in “Citizen Kane” Agnieszka and her little film crew search out the various characters who had contact with Birkut and each tell a slightly different story. Not as much radically different narratives as in Kurusawa’s “Rashomon”, but enough to reveal facets of a character who refused to be placed in the boxes people around him wanted him to fit in.

Birkut was a bricklayer on a Stalinist monstrosity project whom the local authorities selected as a poster-boy for the regime. Birkut and his team would be filmed while they would lay 30.000 bricks on a shift and thereby become a hero of socialism. The problem was that Birkut actually took his role serious and tried to use it to improve things around him and if there is something authoritarian systems do not like, it is challengers from below. Birkut had to be silenced, but rather than bend, Birkut insisted on being the hero with integrity, a fatal flaw in socialist Poland.

As Krystyna herself unravels the real story of Birkut, she becomes a nuisance as well and she gets shut down. The question is if you really can shut down people with integrity?

“Man of Marble” is an interesting movie in its own right. It feels original even though it is borrowing from both Welles and Kurusawa, but there is more novelty here than just the setting. The juxtaposition of the presented images, represented by old, black and white newsreels, and the stories from those who actually knew the man, presented in modern color photography, are striking, making a lesson out of questioning the official stories and the narrative of authority. The amazing thing about “Man of Marble” though is that it was possible to make this movie in the first place. This is not a revisionist movie made after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but a movie from the depth of the regime. In 1976 Poland might not have been Stalinist anymore, but it is still an era of strict censure and a monopoly on the narrative.

How on Earth did Wajda get away with making this movie?

One answer is that the criticism of the current (1977) system is masked as a criticism of the Stalinist era, a criticism already Khrushchev opened up for. The implication that the same censure of the truth still takes place is masked as censure against quality. Agnieszka cannot finish her movie because there is not enough material, because Birkut himself is missing, because the quality of her material is not good enough, but it is a paper-thin excuse. It is obvious that the material is good enough. It is too good. Shutting down the movie also effectively stops her from finding the actual Birkut. The ending is also just ambiguous enough to pass through the vigilant eyes of censure, but it takes very little imagination to perceive the challenge in it. The wonder is that censorship was too thick to get this. But then, maybe they intentionally let it pass.

A process had already begun in Poland that broke through the surface on the shipyard in Gdansk a few years later, which in turn led to, well it is known history. The interesting thought is that censorship in Poland covertly may have been on the side of this movement…

“Man of Marble” is a long movie and at times a challenging movie to watch. Answers are not easily provided and a lot has to be read between the lines, but given the effort, it is a rewarding and interesting movie and warmly recommended by me.