Striking Out
March 11, 2007
"Strike" is not the first movie that German director Völker Schlöndorff filmed in Poland. His adaptation of the Günter Grass novel "The Tin Drum," which was also made in the Baltic sea port of Gdansk, was awarded a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1980.
"Eastern Europe is my destiny," Schlöndorff said.
Schlöndorff based his latest movie, which premiered in Germany this week -- two weeks after its Polish release -- on the life of activist Anna Walentynowicz, a crane operator whose firing in August 1980 led 17,000 workers at the Gdansk shipyard to put down their tools and join a movement that would eventually help topple communism.
Between fiction and history
Inspired by Walentynowicz and led by Lech Walesa, an electrician at the shipyard, millions of Polish white and blue-collar workers took to the streets demanding better working conditions, even though only 10 years earlier similar strikes had ended in bloodshed with dozens of people killed by machine gun fire and over 1,000 injured.
Despite the obvious similarities with Walentynowicz, the film's protagonist -- Agniezska -- is a fictional character. Played by Katharina Thalbach, who also starred in "The Tin Drum," she is brave, resolute, charismatic and uncompromising: both a faithful Catholic and a convinced Communist, a working, single mother on a personal quest for justice.
"She's a picture-book hero, I call her 'the hero of Gdansk,'" said Schlöndorff. "She has no intention of saving the world or even bringing communism down."
"At the same time, she's a faithful Catholic praying to her (Pope John Paul II) Woytila. It is a story that reminds me of Brecht's 'Saint Joan of the Stockyards,'" he said.
Dreamers and politicians
In the movie, Agniezska is portrayed as the emotional driving force behind the Solidarity movement, but also as a modest person who will eventually become overshadowed by Lech Walesa, the masculine icon of the Polish protests.
In one scene of the movie, Walesa -- played by Polish heartthrob Andrzej Chyra -- tells her: "You are a dreamer. And I do politics. Every ship needs a captain."
Anna Walentynowicz fell into obscurity after the protests achieved their goal and the movement, which would soon be formally known as Solidarity, was accepted as the Soviet bloc's only independent trade union. Lech Walesa, on the other hand, remained in politics and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.
Artistic rendering or misinterpretation?
While "Strike" is a tribute to the rise of Solidarity, the movie caused quite a controversy when it was shown in Poland last month. It was slammed as "offensive" by several of the real-life heroes who founded the trade union.
"This film does not present the true facts of Anna Walentynowicz's life," Solidarity activist Joanna Gwiazda was quoted by the Polish PAP news agency.
Gwiazda said Schlöndorff misrepresented Walentynowicz as being illiterate and skewed facts about her personal life.
Joanna's husband and fellow activist Andrzej Gwiazda also accused Schlöndorff of misrepresenting Poles and falling victim to national stereotypes.
"The film shows poorly-educated and hard-drinking shipyard workers -- it fits perfectly with the (false) vision of Poles as drunks and thieves," he said.
A spokesperson for Walentynowicz said the 77-year-old pensioner was threatening a lawsuit should Schlöndorff refuse to cut several scenes she finds slanderous.