“Remarkable for the audacity of its project and its closeness to recent, historic events, Man of Iron is screened in honor of the second anniversary (August 14) of its subject, the Gdansk shipyard strike which led to the formation of SOLIDARNOSC, Poland's independent trade-union movement. The media in Poland is untrustworthy, but the relative autonomy which Wajda's international reputation secured for his Production Unit X made it possible for his films to state truths and injustices which would otherwise remain suppressed. Man of Iron takes this to a new high without the use of veiled allusions and ambiguities. It inserts fiction into the fearless chronicling of recent events, making use of documentary footage and personal appearances by Anna Walentynowicz and Lech Wa'll'esa. The plot is a continuation of his earlier film, Man of Marble, in which Agnieszka, an unstoppable film student, finds her attempts to research the disappearance of a champion brick-layer, venerated in the Stalinist era as an ideal worker, increasingly threatened and prevented. She finds his son, prophetically a worker in the Gdansk shipyard, and persuades him to assist her. The film ends with the unstoppable combination of intellectual woman and working-class man: the truth must out....
“Man of Iron continues their story. They are married, and then separated as a result of the struggle for the survival of SOLIDARNOSC. Paralleling this is the story of Winkiel, a sweaty, alcoholic journalist who, serving as a police informer, finally suffers a crisis of conscience and allegiance. Wajda once again makes the role of the media central. Uncertainty dogged the film's production and exhibition. At the last minute, an uncensored print arrived in Cannes, where it won the top award. Just days before the imposition of martial law last December, the official Polish nomination for Best Foreign Film Academy Award was mysteriously altered to Man of Iron: a bureaucrat who knew what was coming had changed sides. Now, with SOLIDARNOSC driven underground, the film carries its energy and burning conviction. Its effect is also transmitted on film: Godard's latest, Passion, uses Jerzy Radziwilowicz, the star of Man of Marble and Man of Iron, as a young Polish director. Passion ends with Isabelle Huppert and Hanna Schygulla committing themselves to following him back to Poland: ‘Allons en Pologne.'” --Richard Kwietniowski