IMDb user comments for
Czlowiek z zelaza (1981)

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Great movie about history, 9 April 2002

Author: antoni-1 from Nurmijarvi, Finland

A great movie about Poland's history containing also authentic material from the civil disorders. The movie handles also the viewpoint of individual in communist system. Screenplay is great.

Nine stars out of ten.

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Poland triumphs...as does Wajda, 13 March 2003

Author: (pipeoxide@aol.com) from USA & Bulgaria

What you need to know about "Man of Iron":

1. Palme D'Or 1981

2.Wajda's sequel to "Man of Marble"

3.Sweet-a** performances from Poland's acting elite

****NOTE**** Ok, you really do have to have a Warsaw-pact historical/political background when approaching this film, because it's compactly interwoven into flashback sequences recalling various anti-commie events (worker's movements and so on). And yes, that's mustachioed Lech Walesa making a cameo. If you have no idea what the Solidarnost movement was read up before watching this. Of course, the emotional and thus universal element is present (Maciek and Agnieska's love, etc) but this is mostly a story of survival and determination in the face of corruption and political hostilities. Polish people took amazing steps against their government as early as the late 60s, and here we see the triumphant and climactic finish to these efforts. Wajda incorporates interesting documentary footage within the film to make it more effective and appealing to his audience.

See "Man of Iron" and feel nostalgia for the times when Eastern Europe saw change as a forthcoming and hopeful force. Classic.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
A classic..., 7 August 2008

Author: trelkovskistooth from London, UK

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.

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6 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the most important films from arguably the most important film movement in cinema history - the "Films of Moral Anxiety"., 26 May 2001

Author: Dawid Bleja from Melbourne, Australia

This film movement, while in no way the most important film movement artistically, considerably helped morally support and unite the Poles into a decade long, almost nation-wide rebellion against the Communist party which bloomed into the freeing of the Polish state from Soviet rule. This was a catalyst for the break-up of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the end of the cold war, and a new stability in Europe, and indeed the world. Only taking this into account can one watch "Czlowiek z Zelaza" and truly appreciate how powerful this film is.

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Redemption?, 26 May 2008

Author: allenrogerj from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A sequel and companion to and a parody of Man of Marble. Whereas Agnieska, a young woman and an idealist about what she can do, is trying to find the truth there, here Winkel, middle-aged and alcoholic, is out to create convincing lies to discredit a strike-leader, the son of Agnieska's subject and now her husband. The same process of flashback and revelation takes place, showing past strikes in the ship-works and how Maciej Tomczyk became the "man of iron". The ironies here are harsher than in MAn of Marble- there's an unmentioned man of steel- Stalin, creator of communist Poland- lurking behind the scene; the state operatives- minister, shipyard manager, Captain Wirski of the police- have lost any of the idealism or beliefs that may once have inspired them and have only the belief in their right to rule. At the end the manager insists that an agreement imposed by force isn't valid to explain why the one agreed to between Solidarity and the government will fail, without ever realising that that is why every government-imposed agreement has failed and would fail. We see Captain Wirski practising Polish Police martial arts- truncheon work- in a gym for exercise while his subordinates sympathise with and help the strikers. Finally, even if Winkel cannot tell the lies he is meant to, the strikers will not accept him as a friend; he is too tainted by his past. He has to go out and probably lose his job and face prison for the accident that was hushed-up but he may have begun to save his soul.

One fascinating thing about this film and Man of Marble is the revelation of how helpless the Polish government was. A dictatorship, with ideological control of the police, the film studios, the press, could not stop Wajda making films excoriating them. The best they could do was to censor them for Polish distribution.

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