Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

tenshi_ippikiookami Ironic, tongue-in-cheek, smart and a tad too long, "Man of Marble" is a good movie that can't help being a little bit too much in love with itself, on top of being unable to know where to stop, thus ending being a little bit repetitive.Agnieszka, a university student doing her diploma film, decides to investigate in the past of long forgotten hero of the people Birkut. Her search brings her to discover a lot about a man that was put in a pedestal to then be forgotten and erased from the history of the nation.Wajda does not use a lot of subtlety in this film, but who needs it when the script is smart enough, the direction top notch, with some great shots and a pace that is sometimes close to an action movie, and there is really good acting (in particular our hero, Agnieszka, played with a lot of sass and confidence by Krystyna Janda). The score and the use of locations is also great.However, the movie clocks at over two hours and a half, and the ideas behind the movie: the use of unknown people by the ones in power as little more than toys, destroying lives and dreams without a second of remorse, the difficulty to fight the system or the way paranoia extends everywhere in some regimes become undone by repetition and by a story that starts to spin on its wheels around the 1 hour and a half mark.It is totally worth checking though. Just be sure to have enough time (you may want to have some breaks).

Emil Bakkum In my recent reviews of the Defa films about the life of Karl Liebknecht I pointed out, that the textbook Bolshevist character is revolutionary and self-sacrificing, willing to exploit itself for the benefit of society. It chanced that I have just seen the Polish film Man of Marble, which elaborates on just this subject. Hence I enjoyed the film, even though the message in the narrative is rather vague. The story plays in the late seventies. The leading thread is a film project, that is meant to finish the studies of Agnieszka, one of the main characters. She decides to make a commentary on the former lead worker Mateusz Birkut, who rose to extreme popularity in the fifties. Then in the aftermath of Stalinism he was discredited and put in prison, apparently simply because he became a bit of a nuisance - like so many others. Agnieszkas project is not welcomed by the authorities, because it reopens old wounds. However, they do provide her with the means to start the project (a camera crew of three people). As the story unfolds, Agnieszka turns out to be a typical news-hawk: intrusive, chasing "great material", without much respect for other peoples feelings. In a chain of interviews the old companions tell about their part in Birkuts career. I don't know if it is intended, but my sympathy went mainly to those characters, people who were less fortunate than Birkut, and nonetheless managed to do something useful with their lives. Birkut starts as a brick layer. He participates in a propaganda project, that aims to boost productivity in building. It uses the division of labor, and the mechanic motion, that in the west is called Taylorism. Birkut is launched as a celebrity, a working class hero, and enjoys all the privileges. Many former colleagues get a dislike for him, since he pushes up their norms. At the same time, the authorities get tired of Birkuts mediation for fellow workers,and try to put him on the sidelines. Birkut ignores the warning signals, and is eventually convicted and imprisoned for four years. In the post-Stalin era he is rehabilitated, but due to his embitterment he remains an outcast. After all these years Agnieszka is unable to track him down, but she finds his son Maciej Tomczyk (Birkut never really married, and later abandoned his girlfriend). Maciej tells that Birkut has passed away. In the sequel Man of Iron we learn that he was actually shot during a workers' upsurge. As said above, the film message is mixed. Birkut is not a man of high morals, but a victim of the system. The increase of labor productivity is a common goal in all economies, no matter what their ideologies may be. In capitalism the driving force is extra pay, or in times of large unemployment the competition between the workers. In the Bolshevist states the workers were supposed to voluntarily exploit themselves. Solshenitsyn once told a story, that just after the revolution the propaganda drove some simple minds to actually work themselves to death. Later productivity was stimulated by giving social rewards for excellent achievements (the famous surpassing of the planned task), in the form of marks of honor (often to a collective or enterprise). Workers ethics in Japan have also been mentally unhealthy. You need trade unions to provide for a counterbalance, and this is in fact the subject of the sequel film Man of Iron. In my opinion the film is not anti-Bolshevist - and it was financed by the state. It just calls for better balances in the social power distribution within the system. Probably there are lots of hidden meanings in the film. For instance, Birkut burns his fingers, after "subversive elements" have heated one of his bricks, which is quite funny. From then on Birkut wears gloves. And a fellow worker of Birkut enters the office of a party bureaucrat and never returns, even though there is no other exit. The legs of Agnieszka move in all directions (you will not see this behavior with for instance Julia Roberts). This category of social films is just my cup of tea, so if you like the type I suggest that you read my other reviews.

MartinHafer When I saw this film, I was very shocked at how subversive the content was. While it was filmed in Poland during the Soviet-dominated era, the film focused on a fictional character's rise and fall in local government. Mateusz Birkut is an ordinary Polish bricklayer working on a massive government project. A film maker decides to stage a propaganda stunt to see if a new record for speed bricklaying could be set. Birkut agrees to give it a try along with his crew. Not only did they meet their goal but they exceeded it--and it was all captured on film to be shown to the masses. Overnight, Birkut becomes a minor celebrity and he is given a nice job working for local government. And, for some reason, over the years his name is just about completely forgotten.Now, over 20 years later, a young film maker has stumbled upon Birkut's name and some of the newsreel footage but she is really curious how he went from hero to nobody so quickly. She spends most of the film reviewing old film clips and tracking down those who knew Birkut to find out WHY. However, repeatedly she is told to mind her own business and lots of roadblocks are thrown in her path. Finally, after exhaustive work and putting herself out on a limb politically, she finds out how the repressive government worked during the Stalin years--taking a hero and eventually jailing him as a political prisoner and then erasing memories of his existence. Repeatedly, she is warned to let the matter drop, as even in the post-Stalin era it wasn't exactly a free country. How this very critical film ever got made it beyond me but it's wonderfully made and captivating.

Daniel Hayes So many film students have wasted their time trying to study "Kane" as a character study and as a satire. But it wasn't really either of those things, but an experiment in depth for the camera and narrative structures. The frequent comparison between that film and this one makes a lot of sense superficially; the newsreel footage, the interviewees made up to look 20 years older.But Agniezcka is making a film, rather than a piece for a newspaper: journalism vs. art, capitalism vs. socialism. Although the journalists in "Kane" said otherwise, they were never seeing "who he was" rather "what he was like" ie. his behaviour, how others perceived him etc. Here we have something broader, examining a man confronting society, confronting his friends, and confronting himself all at the same time. Newspaper journalism tells us what something is like. Good documentary strives to really define what or who something was.This is a highly intelligent structure, moreso than his previous works and moreso even than "Kane." As a meditation on film-making, it moves gracefully from the shots captured by Agniezcka's cinematographer, and the shots of Wajda himself, forcing us to draw parallels.It's a shame Wajda remains largely unknown. Perhaps the up-coming Criterion set of his "War Trilogy" will change that.4 out of 5 - An excellent film