Before Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" (1993) was Andrzej Wajda's "Korczak" (1990). Shot in melancholic blacks and whites, the film stars Wojciech Pszoniak as Doctor Korczak, a Polish-Jewish paediatrician who oversees an orphanage in war-torn Warsaw. As WW2 rages, and the Holocaust blossoms, Korczak does his best to shelter his band of two hundred or so Jewish children.
Spielberg would consult and hire some of Wajda's crew whilst making "List", and would later include a "thank you" message to Wajda at the end of his film's final credit sequence. Unfortunately, like most "holocaust cinema", "Korczak" is a trite, sentimental film which reveals little about the historical and psycho-social forces at work behind the events depicted. We watch as Nazis brutalise Jews, as the saintly Korczak steps in, and of course the inevitable final act march toward gas chambers. It's "Schindler's List" without the murder-porn.
Still, the overall thrust of Wajda's film is touching. Wajda's Korczak isn't a conventional saviour, but a man who resolves to join Jews on their journey toward certain death. He refuses to abandon them, refuses to make a dire situation worse, a seemingly useless act which nevertheless epitomises the height of courage, humanity and decency.
"Korczak" has been compared to Louis Malle's Holocaust themed "Goodbye, children", but Wajda's climax is much more grim. Here we watch as Korczak's orphans are shipped to Treblinka, one of three "Operation Reinhard camps" (named after Reinhard Heydrich, chairman of the 1942 Wannsee Conference). Wajda's final title card then informs us that Korczak and his kids were gassed at Treblinka, but it's equally likely that the kids and adults were processed and separated here and then shipped further eastward for either gassing, internment or slave labour.
"You do not know how evil this film is," Claude Lanzmann would say to the wife of the French Prime Minister when Wajda's film was screened for a special audience in 1990. Some argued that the film absolved Poles of their role in the Holocaust, of their complicity, a fact which Wajda actually does touch upon; we see Korczak being betrayed by a number of prominent Polish figureheads throughout the film.
Another complaint is that Wajda's final fantasy sequence, in which Korczak and his kids appear to be set free, is "insulting". A simplistic coda, maybe, but insulting? Throughout the film Wajda contrasts the idyllic innocence of the kids - an innocence which Korczak desires to preserve - with encroaching barbarism. The film's fantastical final sequence is in keeping with this theme.
"A pessimistic ending would have said to me that all these endeavours of Dr. Korczak were in vain," Wajda would say of his climax, "that pedagogy in the face of force has no sense; that no efforts of man can reverse the fact that he is dying so accidentally. This would be an awful, existentialist point of view. There would have been nothing easier than showing the death of the children in a gas chamber. It would have been a very moving scene. Everyone would have been crying. But do we have the right, does art have the right to show this? Is art for this? Art has to stop short of certain facts, has to look for other possibilities."
In short, Wajda does not believe that the futility of Korczak's actions negate the righteousness of his deeds. It's the old saying: better to die for a good idea than live for nothing, and no good deed can ever be tainted by its ultimate ineffectuality. It's a sentiment common in Holocaust films.
7/10 – For more interesting Holocaust films, see Costa Gavras' "Amen", Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties", Vittorio de Sica's "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis", Pontecorvo's "Burn", Marcel Ophuls' "Hotel Terminus", 1972's "Winter Soldier", Visconti's "The Damned" and Menno Mejes' "Max".
Spielberg would consult and hire some of Wajda's crew whilst making "List", and would later include a "thank you" message to Wajda at the end of his film's final credit sequence. Unfortunately, like most "holocaust cinema", "Korczak" is a trite, sentimental film which reveals little about the historical and psycho-social forces at work behind the events depicted. We watch as Nazis brutalise Jews, as the saintly Korczak steps in, and of course the inevitable final act march toward gas chambers. It's "Schindler's List" without the murder-porn.
Still, the overall thrust of Wajda's film is touching. Wajda's Korczak isn't a conventional saviour, but a man who resolves to join Jews on their journey toward certain death. He refuses to abandon them, refuses to make a dire situation worse, a seemingly useless act which nevertheless epitomises the height of courage, humanity and decency.
"Korczak" has been compared to Louis Malle's Holocaust themed "Goodbye, children", but Wajda's climax is much more grim. Here we watch as Korczak's orphans are shipped to Treblinka, one of three "Operation Reinhard camps" (named after Reinhard Heydrich, chairman of the 1942 Wannsee Conference). Wajda's final title card then informs us that Korczak and his kids were gassed at Treblinka, but it's equally likely that the kids and adults were processed and separated here and then shipped further eastward for either gassing, internment or slave labour.
"You do not know how evil this film is," Claude Lanzmann would say to the wife of the French Prime Minister when Wajda's film was screened for a special audience in 1990. Some argued that the film absolved Poles of their role in the Holocaust, of their complicity, a fact which Wajda actually does touch upon; we see Korczak being betrayed by a number of prominent Polish figureheads throughout the film.
Another complaint is that Wajda's final fantasy sequence, in which Korczak and his kids appear to be set free, is "insulting". A simplistic coda, maybe, but insulting? Throughout the film Wajda contrasts the idyllic innocence of the kids - an innocence which Korczak desires to preserve - with encroaching barbarism. The film's fantastical final sequence is in keeping with this theme.
"A pessimistic ending would have said to me that all these endeavours of Dr. Korczak were in vain," Wajda would say of his climax, "that pedagogy in the face of force has no sense; that no efforts of man can reverse the fact that he is dying so accidentally. This would be an awful, existentialist point of view. There would have been nothing easier than showing the death of the children in a gas chamber. It would have been a very moving scene. Everyone would have been crying. But do we have the right, does art have the right to show this? Is art for this? Art has to stop short of certain facts, has to look for other possibilities."
In short, Wajda does not believe that the futility of Korczak's actions negate the righteousness of his deeds. It's the old saying: better to die for a good idea than live for nothing, and no good deed can ever be tainted by its ultimate ineffectuality. It's a sentiment common in Holocaust films.
7/10 – For more interesting Holocaust films, see Costa Gavras' "Amen", Wertmuller's "Seven Beauties", Vittorio de Sica's "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis", Pontecorvo's "Burn", Marcel Ophuls' "Hotel Terminus", 1972's "Winter Soldier", Visconti's "The Damned" and Menno Mejes' "Max".