In Wheeler Auditorium

Admission: $2.50

“In his important war trilogy, A Generation, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds, Andrzej Wajda examined the complex and agonizing role of the individual in time of crisis. In Man of Marble, Wajda addresses the ironic relationship between individual and society in recent Polish history.
Student filmmaker Agnieszka chooses for the subject of her first TV documentary the famous bricklaying shockworker of the fifties, Mateusz Birkut, an official hero whose portrait waved at the time from government buildings and whose statue now gathers dust in the back rooms of a gallery. Also somewhat dusty is the documentary film made about Birkut which Agnieszka uses to lead her in uncovering the fate of the man who began as a peasant socialist and became a victim of the manipulation of human potential and enthusiasm in the post-war industrialization period. Wajda juxtaposes the Fifties and the Seventies, integrating footage from Polish newsreels of 25 years ago and simulated documentary footage of Birkut with the story of Agnieszka's struggle in 1976 to find and record a story well hidden in that footage. Agnieszka, a product of the Seventies who wasn't even born when Birkut was famous, is hyperactive, cold, annoying (especially to those into whose activities she pries, but also to us) and eventually angry; Birkut is shy, sweet, naive, honest, bewildered and eventually lost. Birkut the construction worker built his house of bricks; Agnieszka the filmmaker-worker (à la Vertov) builds hers with pieces of truth. They are brought together, after a fashion, with a twist of corn that nevertheless doesn't detract from the committed exploration of a dialectic that Wajda here attempts.”--J.B.