Pan Tadeusz, aka The Last Days
Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
Directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1999. Amidst social and economic turmoil, 1990s Polish cinema turned toward heritage. Pan Tadeusz —shot in 1998 to mark romantic writer Adam Mickiewicz’s bicentennial—is Andrzej Wajda at his most nation-building and nostalgic. Adapting the eponymous epic poem, Wajda retains its lyric verse, supplementing Mickiewicz’s rhyming couplets with elegantly swaying camera moves. Set in 1811-12 Polish-speaking Lithuania, the film revels in aristocratic quarrels and interdynastic conflict as two families iron out a decades-long feud against the backdrop of Napoleon’s (somewhat eagerly awaited) invasion of Russia. The film was a popular patriotic event of the highest order: over six million tickets were sold at home (the international release was a bomb), garnering Wajda praise for once again uniting a disheveled nation through images. Prizing extravagant theatricality over historical veracity, Pan Tadeusz stands today as one of Wajda’s strongest and strangest costume dramas, its sumptuous CinemaScope photography evincing a desire to depict the past as it never was. Part of the series Once There Was History . Andrzej Wajda at 100. Screening on film.