Search - Landscape After Battle on DVD

A Haunting and Memorable Film That Takes Place After WWII

Richard J. Brzostek | New England, USA | 12/22/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Landscape After Battle" (1970; Krajobraz Po Bitwie) is a haunting and memorable film directed by Andrzej Wajda that takes place just after World War II. The film is based on several short stories written by Tadeusz Borowski, who survived Auschwitz. The film begins with the Americans entering a concentration camp at the end of the war in 1945, freeing the prisoners. However, they are freed from one camp and placed into another -- this time guarded by the Americans deep inside Germany. Fearing the people held inside the Nazi camps would know no sense of law, the authorities caged them in another prison until they could decide what to do with them.

Tadeusz (played by Daniel Olbrychski) is an intellectual man who sorts through rubbish to find books to read and writes poetry. He befriends a Jewish woman named Nina in the new camp who fled Poland after the war. After talking, they decide to leave the camp to go for a walk in the woods. Once outside the camp, the two share their feelings and becomes physically intimate. Nina tells Tadeusz she would rather be anywhere, except for Poland. Tadeusz, after thinking long, decides Poland is his home and should return there. Both decide that they should reenter the camp for a while, but doing so creates a dramatic turn of events neither expected.

"Landscape After Battle" is a different type of war film, as it really starts with the war just ending. The viewers are exposed to some of the gritty details of the aftermath of war, as the name of the film suggests. The story is partially tragic, as are many Polish films, however, there is a powerful and artistic flair to the film. "Landscape After Battle" is a gem in the crown of achievement of Andrzej Wajda -- one that is sure to have several scenes that will leave you with lasting memories.
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3 of the 4 reviews were identical and written by the same ma

TJ-STL | St Louis | 03/11/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"The man the wrote 3 of the reviews and maybe the fourth must have been connected with the film for some reason. His description of the story if quite good and through but all three were biased and word for word identical. The narrative was very good, but the evaluation was obviously very slanted. However, three things need to be added. The film was 90+ in a foreign language with subtitles, it never explained why the Polish and American troop wanted to imprison and even kill the Polish men they liberated from the concentration camps and lastly the "love" story did not seem to develop as one would expect. But the film did flow slowly but maintained my interest and the acting of the two main characters was good. I never did understand the marching and violin playing. I gave it one star because the other review were apparently very biased and rated this movie way to high. SORRY but that's how I see it."