Through a glass, darkly

One of the interesting things about cinema is the way it allows us the chance to arrive at a mediated view of our unpleasant past. By that I mean that it gives us the distance to be objective and with that distance comes insight.

For example, with the exception of The Hurt Locker and In the Valley of Elah, there have been no films that deal with 9/11 and the war it prompted in any meaningful way. They also tend to fail at the box office because people generally insist it's just too soon and memories are too raw. They may have a point because, with the exception of The Deer Hunter, the first film to engage with Vietnam in a meaningful way was Platoon which came out more than ten years after the end of the war. Given that there is no serious end to America's middle eastern conflicts in sight then we may have to wait a while before we see it dealt with on the cinema screen.

In Europe however we are going through what I think of as 'second generation syndrome' and this has led to a number of interesting films about the Second World War. From Holland we have Black Book, from Germany Downfall and Sophie Scholl, from France Days of Glory, Female Agents and most recently Army of Crime. Each of these films examines different, not always pleasant, aspects of the wartime experience with candour and frankness and the results are often touching and always powerful. What is most interesting, it seems to me, is that these subjects were left largely untouched by the generation that was most directly involved in the war; it was simply too painful for them to deal with. Generally they have been made by the generation that came after - I accept that Paul Verhoeven lived through the war but he was very young - and as such they are able to take a detached look at events which may only seem shameful with the passage of time.

These musings are prompted by just having watched Katyn which is a stunning piece of cinema from the Polish director Andrzej Wajda which was deservedly Oscar nominated this year. Wajda is one of the most underrated of European directors and perhaps the least celebrated of the greats, but he is still making films at the age of 83 and his talent remains undiminished.

Katyn is the story of the titular massacre of Polish soldiers in the early days of the Second World War. Twelve thousand officers were killed and that's a big number to get your head around; Wajda's inspired device is to tell the story through their families waiting anxiously for news of loved ones. The background may be epic but the story in the foreground is intimate and affecting - Richard Attenborough does it all the time.

Katyn is actually what cinema is all about. It highlights a story which is an absolute outrage but it also makes important points about identity and nationalism and the ultimate tragedy of all of those people caught in the middle. And even though the story takes place almost seventy years ago I couldn't help but feel contemporary resonances which is the real power of cinema in the hands of a genius such as Wajda.