A disgraceful portrayal of the Battle of Warsaw

Battle of Warsaw 1920

Director Jerzy Hoffman Screenwriters Jerzy Hoffman, Jaroslaw Sokol Cast Viktor Balabanov, Adam Ferency

Jerzy Hoffman might not be the most famous of Polish film directors but he has certainly shown himself to be competent in the past, most notably in his adaptations of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s epic Trilogy (With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Colonel Wołodyjowski). Therefore, despite its relatively poor critical reception, I was quite hopeful for his latest work Battle of Warsaw 1920 3D, which has received a surprisingly wide UK release. Unfortunately, I was to be disappointed.

The Battle of Warsaw is considered by many to have been the decisive battle in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919 – 1921, in which the Polish army managed to rout the Bolshevik forces, who previously been considered unstoppable. This could have made an interesting film and, while Hoffman’s effort is not entirely without merit, a combination of heavy handedness and overacting make what was supposed to be a serious war movie feel like a cross between a propaganda film and a comedy.

Take, for example, one of the first scenes in the film, when we see Lenin discussing the War with the Politburo. He makes the clichéd “first Poland, then Europe, then World” speech, after which there is literally the sound of thunder and a flash of red before we move on to the title screen. Hoffman did the same trick when introducing the main antagonist, Chmielnicki, in With Fire and Sword but at least Chmielnicki had some depth, rather than being nothing more than a cheap comic book villain, like Lenin is here.

Some would argue that we should not have expected objectivity from a Polish made film about this topic but that’s not really the problem here. The Trilogy films weren’t at all objective but, unlike this movie, they were at least competently made. The Deluge even received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Battle of Warsaw doesn’t even seem to have a proper antagonist. Lenin is far too distant a figure for him to directly affect the protagonists — a cavalry officer and his new wife — and while Cheka agent Bykowski looks set to take the role he is killed off about half way through. Arguably a war movie doesn’t need a direct antagonist but the absence of one is only a sign of deeper structural and pacing flaws. A lot of the film just doesn’t flow well and, most damningly of all, the battle itself is pushed right to the very end. We get to witness both sides planning but when the time comes we only see some soldiers defending a trench and a cavalry charge — and then it’s over. We really get no feel for the battle, no real idea of how it progressed and what happened. The titular battle is almost an afterthought.

On the technical side the film certainly looks good. The 3D is mostly competently done, though it does get very distracting during the faster paced sequences. Hoffman also included far too many slow motion shots, which, together with soundtrack, really add to the ridiculously over-dramatic feel of the scenes in which they are used.

In short, the film has very little to say about the overarching war plot and while several scenes almost make you feel for the smaller scale story of our protagonists, these moments are ruined by the director’s inability to show restraint. This is one of the most hilariously awful films that I’ve seen this year.