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Overrated and overhyped

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A very heavy movie, extremely brutal, merciless picture of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Andrzej Wajda pictured war as a tedious, bloody, messy, dirty, dusty, hopeless, heroic and very terrible affair. The last detachments of active resistance try to fight the overwhelming Nazi forces in Warsaw. The very film is not even about the fight but about the heroic efforts simply to live, to survive, to break through and to win. The whole film is so grim, gory and dark that it is way too difficult to watch it all and not to make a pause just to breathe some air. War is Not fun, and it does show in this movie. The excellent casting of good actors do a decent job, but the film tends to drag and become too tedious and too grim. It presses so much and makes it almost unbearable to see to the unhappy end

With the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw in the summer of 1944 the Poles in the city rose up against the Nazi occupiers . Men , women and children took part in it as they waited for the Soviet liberators . Unfortunately the Red Army doesn't do liberation and Joe Stalin didn't recognise any difference between Nazi stormtroopers and Polish nationalist so the Red Army sat outside the gates waiting for one side to beat the other so that there'd be no resistance for them entering he Warsaw capital . The number of Nazi dead was counted in thousands , the Polish dead in hundreds of thousands . It was a testimony to Polish courage and Soviet cynicism Andrzej Wajda's KANAL tells part of the story . Certainly the Polish courage is well represented . It wasn't just the Polish underground resistance army who took part in the uprising . So did intellectuals , old men , woman and children and this film represents the diverse cross pattern . Armed only with small arms they fought off battle hardened SS divisions who had aircraft , tanks and heavy artillery . What the film sadly doesn't mention is the role the Soviets played by stabbing the Poles in the back . It's understandable when communist Poland was still under Soviet influence . Nikita Khruschev had started his " de-Stalinism " program but such a change was like replacing Nazism with fascism so while there was some benefits to this new regime it doesn't stop the downside of the fundamentalist dictatorship That said Wajda has made a classic European film . I remembered it from 20 years ago and when I tracked it down I wasn't disappointed by it . It's a mix of styles with the scenes above ground mirroring the Italian Neo-Realist movement with the scenes set under the eponymous sewers ( Kanal being Polish for sewer ) being inspired by German Expressionism . The characters are people you can believe in from Lt Zadra the courageous patriot in charge of the company to Daisy , a morally ambiguous ( A prostitute ? ) woman . The director doesn't make the mistake like many film makers of showing what a sewer is . More often than not they're just a cosy film set . Not here . It's a sanitation system full of faeces and urine and dangerous gases and the characters have to crawl through it . This reality combined with a haunting mood muzak by Jan Krenz makes KANAL a riveting film There are a couple of flaws to it however . The lack of any mention to the Soviets is forgivable as it's understandable . What isn't so forgivable is that the time frame is rather confusing . Many of the characters succumb to madness but considering they've fought off the Nazis for 56 days would a few hours in the sewers cause something Nazi shells were incapable of ? It's never stated how Daisy would know the layout of the sewer system and if she's so important why not let her lead the party . There's also an unlikely need for characters to spout existentialist dialogue at unlikely times . There's also the irritating lack of consistency where matches not working in one scene only to have them working a few scenes later and characters telling their comrades not to shout in case the Germans hear them only to have the same characters shout in the following scene These are minor flaws despite being noticeable . KANAL is a film that will stay with you and scenes will burn themselves in to the memory such as a soldier asking a young , pretty woman lying on a stretcher if she's unwell only to see the blanket fall away revealing her right leg has been amputated above the knee . You'll also be able to remember long after seeing it who gets killed in what order . This might mean it doesn't have the same impact upon repeated viewing but it's a film everyone should see at least once

I saw this film in a film festival in Dhaka, in early sixties(Now Bangladesh, then East Pakistan). For me as a student, Sattayjit Ray's Apu trilogy was my only exposer to any kind of art film then. Visual realism was a new thing for us in Indian sub continent. Audience were so spellbound that they could smell sewage sitting in the cinema hall. I think like all great directors, Wajda had the cinematographic sense to create that environment where viewers reality could blend with creative fiction. In post war period of late forties and in early fifties like the School of Polish Posters, all creative mediums went through this fatalistic phase. It was grotesque but realistic.

A great film, at first viewing people may not understand some of the cultural references. The tall blonde brave sewer-runner is not a model of Aryan Uber Womanhood but that of a strong polish woman.According to the official line of Nazi Propaganda the metaphor for the Aryan woman was of a breeder , home maker not a woman that would take a pro-active role in dragging aman half way across the canals of Warsaw. I saw the movie as less of a metaphor for hell as that of an actual hell,the hell of siege such as stalingrad. Stalingrad was not a metaphor for hell it was hell on earth. As was Warsaw in the last days of organized rebellion.As much as Das Boot style brought across a sliver of the real life incident , Kanal's style brings across the desperation of the struggle in Warsaw. The optomistic saddness can be written off as slavic melancholy, or better described as the hope and sorrow of a nation that has many times been routed from the map of europe only to resurface strong and proud.Everything was taken from them and hope itself is in question as the final reel fades to black.