This is not a documentary. It's not even a docu-drama. Actually it's more of a study of cause and effect and an exploration of the different attitudes and moral points of view surrounding the situation in Poland during World War II. It focuses on the event that occurred in the Katyn forest in April-May of 1940 where the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, executed the Polish military officers from the Kozelsk prisoner-of-war camp.
This is a multi-strand chronicle and as such it doesn't really stay with one set of characters but rather shows several families and their experiences. There is random kindness and random violence, as with any account of war, but the one thing that will stay with the viewer is the very orderly and organized callous violence of the NKVD as they bring out the Polish officers, tie their hands behind their backs, and put a bullet to the back of each soldier's head. The very nature of that kind of violence is so calculated it is actually hard to relate to.
The movie starts with Anna (Maja Ostaszewska) and her daughter Nika trying to convince her husband Andrzej (Arthur Zmijewski), who is one of the Polish officers bring held by the Soviet army near the border of Poland, to flee from the Soviet troops. The Polish officers are bring held waiting for transport to an unknown destination. Andrzej refuses, stating that he has sworn an oath to the army and he is honour bound to stay. The notion of being honourable in a situation like that is all very archaic. He goes with the other troops and all the officers find themselves in the prison camp Kozelsk in Russia.
In the brief scenes that are shown from the prison camp the viewer gets the abbreviated version of every single attitude that a prisoner of war can experience. The General (Jan Englert) gives a rousing speech to the troops about keeping their faith, displaying a touching belief in the honour of the force keeping them captive. There is an aside about one of the officers who, according to one of the protagonists, "tried to hang himself again last night," showing how some succumb to desperation. There a stoic older man who offers a young pilot a crucifix and tells him to take it easy and put his faith in the Lord when the young aviator talks of fighting and escaping, giving an example of the attitude that it would be better to struggle. I mention this scene because it is a good example of the way this movie tries to show as much as possible in a short and economic way.
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