Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Jerzy Radziwilowicz | ... | Maciek Tomczyk / Mateusz Birkut | |
Krystyna Janda | ... | Agnieszka | |
Marian Opania | ... | Winkel | |
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Wieslawa Kosmalska | ... | Wieslawa Hulewicz |
Irena Byrska | ... | Matka Hulewicz | |
Boguslaw Linda | ... | Dzidek | |
Lech Walesa | ... | Lech Walesa | |
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Anna Walentynowicz | ... | Anna Walentynowicz |
Jerzy Borowczak | ... | Stanislaw J. Borowczak (as Stanislaw J. Borowczak) | |
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Zbigniew Lis | ... | Zbigniew Lis |
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Teodor Kudla | ... | Teodor Kudla |
Franciszek Trzeciak | ... | Badecki | |
Janusz Gajos | ... | Z-Ca Szefa | |
Andrzej Seweryn | ... | Kapt. Wirski | |
Marek Kondrat | ... | Grzenda |
A worker becomes a "man of iron" forged by experience, a son comes to terms with his father, a couple fall in love, a reporter searches for courage, and a nation undergoes historic change. In Warsaw in 1980, the Party sends Winkel, a weak, alcoholic TV hack, to Gdansk to dig up dirt on the shipyard strikers, particularly on Maciek Tomczyk, an articulate worker whose father was killed in the December 1970 protests. Posing as sympathetic, Winkel interviews people who know Tomczyk, including his detained wife, Agnieszka. Their narrations become flashbacks using actual news footage of 1968 and 1970 protests and of the later birth of free unions and Solidarity. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
There's just one thing that strikes me as odd and keeps me from giving the film ten stars. The wonderful protagonist of Man Of Marble, Agnieszka, is turned here into a stereotypical, boring wife/girlfriend. At a time of great historical importance , when issues she deeply cared about were the talk of Europe, all she finds time to discuss with a reporter who visits her at the detention center is romance. I'm having a hard time picturing the dedicated, driven and idealistic young person we know from Man Of Marble gasp unintelligibly about a child when her husband is on strike with Lech Walesa. A needless and surprising flaw in an otherwise great film.