Word: wajda
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...LOVE IN GERMANY Directed by Andrzej Wajda...
Screenplay by Boleslaw Michalek, Agnieszka Holland and Andrzej Wajda...
...boils over nonstop in this superheated political romance; Andrzej Wajda sees to that. From his first features (the 1950s trilogy comprising A Generation, Kanaland Ashes and Diamonds) to the 1981 Man of Iron, an incendiary docudrama about the Solidarity movement, this Polish director has always made movies as if he believed that craft was an impediment to emotion and subtlety the last refuge of an artistic quisling. His hurtling, bullying camera captures characters in heat or dancing on the barricades taunting their Soviet godfathers. But it takes a strong subject not to be overwhelmed by Wajda's scenery-chewing...
...Although Wajda denies making Danton in response to the events in Poland, it is impossible to forget his political background and decline to read between the frames. When Danton declaims. "Without bread there is no justice, peace or law," or when he tells Robespierre. "Come back to earth I have the only power the street," how can one not hear the echo of Lach Walesa? Like Walesa, Danton is an orator a reversed leader a man too busy for effete manners a man of the people...
Danton's impact is lessened when the film is robbed of its university Nevertheless it is an important thoughtful meditation on revolution and unfliacting idealism. Wajda's humanism ultimately transcends national interests and to tyrants everywhere he sends a vivid reminder that within four months of killing Danton Robespierre too was sacrificed to that implacable god, the revolution...