Ashes and Diamonds
The Polish film Ashes and Diamonds, set during the waning days of World War II chronicles the attempt of a Home Army Polish soldiers named Maciek to assassinate a communist government official named Commissar Szczuka. Although today a viewer might be tempted to immediately side with the anticommunist Home Army, the film is riddled with moral ambiguities and neither man is clearly a hero or a villain. Commissar Szczuka's wife was killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp and he was a freedom fighter against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He is worried about his son, who, contrary to his father's politics, opposes communism and is being detained by the Russians. Maciek likewise is an ambiguous figure: he does not really revel in violence, although circumstances have forced him to play a violent role.
Both men, despite the political tide which tears them apart, are sympathetic on a personal level. Maciek seeks a different way of life when he falls in love with the barmaid Krystyna, who he compares to a diamond in the ashes (hence the title of the film). The film thus suggests that while political circumstances can propel people to violent actions, at heart most people are compassionate and desire happiness. Szczuka is always thinking of his son and his eagerness to see his son at the end of the film causes him to walk unattended in the darkness, straight into the barrel of the gun held by Maciek....
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