Ashes Are For Ever | Far Flungers

His orders as clear as his resolve is wavering, Maciek spends the night joking around, picking up a pretty (if sad) waitress, and trying to figure out his priorities. The space he traverses is a symbolic miniature of the post-war disarray. Soviet soldiers march down the streets, a cross hangs upside down in a bombed-out church, the night seems damp and ominous. When Maciek finally decides to carry out his orders, he shoots Szczuka, who seeks his final comfort in his own assassin's arms. As they cling to one another - a strange father-son version of Pieta, with roles reversed and context stood up on its head - a happy gush of celebratory fireworks explodes behind Maciek's back. It's a remarkable image, later lovingly pinched by Martin Scorsese for the sake of "Bringing Out the Dead", and undoubtedly inspirational for Francis Ford Coppola (firecrackers mix well with killing in "The Godfather, Part II", and Coppola did mention "Ashes and Diamonds" in his recent "Sight & Sound" Top 10 list).

Not to underestimate Wajda's achievement - or Jerzy Wójcik's inventive cinematography - but what makes the film truly unforgettable is Zbigniew Cybulski's legendary turn as Maciek. Clad in a historically wrong outfit (which looked nothing like 1945 and was in fact very much 1958), forever hiding his eyes behind shades (even though most of the movie takes place at night), he was dubbed "the Polish James Dean" for a reason. He never concealed the fact that Dean influenced his contortion-filled acting style. Cybulski uses his whole body to express the anguish he's in. At the same time, his face - once fully exposed in the quiet post-coital scene - reveals a delicate beauty that makes one's heart break when one realizes how much war-related pain has it been exposed to.

The casting of Cybulski was the single most subversive thing Wajda did in "Ashes and Diamonds", since it completely shifted the audience's sympathy towards the figure of what the authorities perceived as an ideological foe. Maciek's cause was as unacceptable for the communist party in 1958 as it was at any given moment in the history of the regime, which is the reason his character needed to die at the end. Still, by casting the communist Szczuka with a fuddy-duddy stage actor Zastrzeżyński, and pitting him against the emotional fireball of Cybulski, Wajda made sure the audience rooted for the losing side of the equation.

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