Czlowiek na torze, 1957
[Man on the Tracks]
At
dusk, the impressive sight of a steam engine passenger train bisects
the horizon, traversing an empty stretch of track under construction
near a rural train station. The train engineer Zapora (Zygmunt Listkiewicz)
and his junior assistant Nowak (Roman Klosowski) perform a station
check of the semaphores and, upon seeing only one light on, proceeds
through the intersection at normal speed before coming into an abrupt
and violent stop at the unexpected sight of a man standing on the
tracks. A cursory inspection of the accident site reveals that a
second light source had been removed from the semaphores, creating
a false indication of all clear in what was intended to be a warning
sign to proceed slowly through the intersection in order to minimize
risk of derailment on the tracks undergoing repair. On the side of
the tracks lies the body of a recently retired engineer named Orzechowski
(Kazimierz Opalinski). From these suspicious (and seemingly damning)
set of physical clues, a team of accident investigators that include
high-ranking officials from the railroad workers union gather at
a stationhouse and attempt to recreate the circumstances behind
the tragic incident. Volunteering to provide the initial testimony
is an ambitious and opportunistic stationmaster named Tuszka (Zygmunt
Maciejewski) who testifies on his strained professional relationship
with the exacting engineer, first as a subordinate whose mechanical
oversights never escaped Orzechowski's meticulous eye, and subsequently,
as a superior unable to compel his senior employee into implementing
unproven (and clearly substandard) practices in the name of worker
efficiency. Implicitly revealing his own insecurities towards his
vocational competence and unearned position of authority, Tuszka
sets the stage for Orzechowski's character assassination.
Based on a screenplay by novelist
and screenwriter Jerzy Stefan Stawinski (whose novel Kanal was adapted
for the Andrzej Wajda film), Man on the Tracks is a penetrating and
trenchant examination of conscience, individualism, and obsolescence.
From the rhythmic introductory title sequence shot from the rails
of a passing train, Andrzej Munk presents an intrinsically human
perspective from beneath (and subliminally crushed by) the interminable
wheels of progress and industrialization. The inferential metaphor
is further reinforced in repeated images of fuel servicing, coal
shoveling, checkout inspections, and mechanical repairs that depict
workers as faceless, commodified labor (note the soot that repeatedly
cover the assistants' face, a figurative erasure of identity that
is subsequently underscored in Orzechowski's hesitant pause before
recognizing Zapora at a public park) that serve the industrial machines,
a theme that similarly pervades Wajda's depiction of turn of the
century, pre-communist Lodz in The Promised Land. Filming in primarily
dark tones and framing a procedural, reconstructive mystery within
the idealized, competitive environment of Soviet-modeled Stakhanovite
worker efficiency demonstrations (a sociopolitical incentive that
Wajda also subsequently explores in the seminal film, Man of Marble),
Munk incisively captures the pervasive psychological atmosphere of
distrust, paranoia, and denunciation that inevitably resulted from
widely reported acts of sabotage (from both willful resistance to
the movement and unintended consequences of detrimental practices
resulting from unrealistic and goals) that, at times, unfairly led
to both over-inflated commendation and public scapegoating at the
seeming whim of (politically motivated) fate. It is this systematic
marginalization of the individual for the purported benefit of a
collective that is inevitably captured in the bittersweet irony of
the film, the human consequence of social revolution reduced to cynical
scrutiny, needless self-sacrifice, and anonymous heroism.
© Acquarello 2005. All rights
reserved.
| DVD | Home | Top |
Prefaced
as a heroic symphony in two parts,