He may be 88 years old and the director of 54 films, but Polish film giant Andrzej Wajda is still evolving as a storyteller. His latest, "Wałesa: Man of Hope," opens in Tokyo on April 5 (as "Wałesa: Rentai no Otoko") and marks his further foray into the realm of history as entertainment, following "Katyn" in 2007. "Wałesa" is the final chapter in Wajda's "Man" trilogy of films based on the Polish Solidarity movement that was led by Lech Wałesa and, as such, it's a proper send-off, charged with passion and crammed with action.
"That is exactly what I intended," says Wajda in a phone interview with The Japan Times. "Some people may feel that not all of it is accurate, or perhaps I made Lech Wałesa too much of a hero. But unless I shift the course of my filmmaking to suit the needs and desires of young people who have little awareness of Solidarity or Wałesa, the stories I want to tell will just remain buried. So I wanted to make 'Wałesa' almost a spectacle instead of just heavy-handed history. At the same time, I wanted to create the figure of Lech Wałesa as I remembered him, to show the world how he acted, the kind of incredible, youthful energy he had. I witnessed him as a young man, and his decision to take his own fate and the fate of the Polish workers into his hands."
Wajda himself joined Solidarity in 1981, after decades of battling the Polish communist government over politically risqué points in his filmmaking, including his famed trilogy of "A Generation," "Kanał" and "Ashes and Diamonds," all of which dealt with being young and longing for freedom in occupied Poland during World War II.