Patrick R

Idle Criterion Film Club Week 2: Kanal (1957)

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Kanal is a 1957 war/thriller film by seminal Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. It's hypothetically a stylish and tense exercise in fatalism as it follows the Warsaw uprising against the Nazis, with elements of the surreal as the last survivors of the resistance retreat through the sewer system.

 

I say theoretically because I haven't seen this since film school, which was a long time ago and I was doing a lot of drugs back then. But I am fairly confident I saw this sober and that it totally blew 20-year-old me away. So let's find out together how apt my memory is.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqcMtWnXkV4

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This movie is some heavy stuff guys. The scenes in the sewer are relentlessly grim and claustrophobic and that final shot of the Lieutenant going back down for his men is haunting. Considering how the events of the Warsaw Uprising unfolded, I'd say the tone is pretty appropriate. The first half of the movie above ground didn't really grab me though. I mean it was good to see how the characters talked up facing death compared to their desperation and crushed spirits in the end, but I didn't find that section itself very engaging. Though ironically one of the scenes I really loved was above ground, when the lieutenant was looking over that barrier at the German tanks and that kid was so nonchalantly talking about how they'd be overrun soon while he emptied out dirt from his boots.

 

I don't have much to say on the individual character arcs other than that they were all appropriately depressing in their own way with the exception of the composer, whose final scenes I thought were a bit much...I didn't really buy his insanity and there was one or two too many dramatic zooms to closeups of his face. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it's never really clear how long they spend down there. I suppose this may be deliberate and for the most part the lack of a sense of time benefits the movie, but it makes the guys mental collapse a bit unbelievable/heavy handed.

 

Also I had no idea those little Goliath tanks were a thing that existed.

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Kanal gripped me to such an extent I had to write a bigger piece on it, which I'll also publish on Filmadeus. And I also want to see the rest of Wajda's War trilogy.

 

---

 

Film_284w_Kanal_original.jpg

 

Kanal opens on German flamethrowers from a distance, setting alight a Polish town. There are no people running or screaming, no characters at all, just the fiery volleys and collapsing structures. The message is clear: the year is 1944 and terror stalks this country. We follow a militia of ordinary men set to oppose the occupier, but in the first line of narration learn their fight is hopeless and these men and women will die.
 
And indeed, fatalism hangs over all of them. Hunted down to a shell of a garrison, the platoon tries to maintain spirits through music, booze or love, all while waiting for the inevitable. When the fortress is lost, the troops retreat into the titular underground canals, desperate to escape to fight another day.
 
What hellish, subterranean maze have these people unknowingly entered? The canals were reported to be safe, and indeed the enemy dares not follow, but it turns out to be a torturous death trap. Someone quotes Dante, but I'm more reminded of the works of Jheronimus Bosch. The people, some of them wounded, split up. Other survivors drop in, oftentimes running and screaming about gas. No one knows where to go. The fumes are choking. Desperation and paranoia set in.
 
The characters aren't deeply developed, and I think this is both because of the ensemble cast nature of the film, but also to allow for easier connection to the audience. They're archetypes, rather than characters. The artist, the commander, the drunk soldier, the smuggler, the volunteer not taken seriously. Everyday people like us, and like we would they're breaking down. Why is it so fascinating to watch these people engage with their ordeal, each in their own way? To see some of their vanities stripped away and others consume them?
 
It's here that Kanal shows its true colors: this isn't a war movie, but a horror film. In its depiction of a group of people running scared through a closed environment and slowly getting picked off by unseen enemies and unknowable forces, it prefigures later genre works such as Cube and even the Silent Hill video games. And there's indeed something very disturbing about this World War 2 setting. The characters' torment is understandable and they're slowly losing their mind. The artist and the drunkard are only the first to go; the former disappearing into the sewer in a fugue state, playing the ocarina, the latter sinking in liquor and scared out of his wits.
 
And for good reason. There's something almost metaphysical about the Nazi enemy. We never see them up close (up until the very end), and their role in the film is that of an elemental force of horror. They send infernal puppet tanks strapped to an umbilical cord to clear out the hiding place. The only early time we see a German soldier his face is instantly gored beyond recognition by a stone. At the hands of the artist no less – a commentary on the beastly nature of even the most delicate souls in these circumstances. Once in the sewers, their threat becomes one with the ghastliness of the environment. They (apparently) spill gas into the tunnels, they drop grenades down manholes and shoot anyone who dares head for the light. We never leave the perspective of the militia, so when a tunnel wall collapses and a flood of grime washes in, is it an act of the enemy, or of God?
 
Each fragment of the original party eventually meets their end, distributed in the flavors ironic, soul-crushing or bone-chilling. When at last the original commander of the unit surfaces, the only one to do so safely, he realizes he's lost everyone and, his spirit broken, slinks back into the hellhole he just escaped from. He does so bathed in utter silence, and only when the screen cuts to black does music crash in with a final shriek, as if suddenly recognizing the atrocity of it all.
 
I don't know any of Wajda's other movies, but Kanal, taken on its own, is an expression of utter loathing. A resentment for history and what we do to one another. Wajda makes his characters wade through human sludge for most of the movie, he shows them at their weakest and most fragile. There is much compassion inside the claustrophobic chutes and between the characters, but not much regard for what happens to them. Did Wajda make this film to get the war out of his system? But what irony that a descent in such incredible filth and shit could be so riveting and beautifully shot! Kanal is a fascinating treat, a wartime horror film made from a place of genuine, chilling, historic revulsion.

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My main takeaway from my first time watching this was it was the first really old movie that unnerved and shook me in such an immediate way. Sure, I knew Citizen Kane was brilliant because of reasons A - Z, and sure Casablanca has an amazing script and outstanding performances, but the effect of time always kept me at a distance from old films (Marx Brothers comedies excluded) until I saw this. Something about this movie was so modern and classical at the same time, it jostled something loose from my brain. It still floored me this time, but now it was much clearer how much more was going on than just a brutal and visceral (games) experience.

 

Speaking of visceral (games) experiences, GO TO HELL. The only way I can really read this movie is that the retreat signals the death of the resistance, with the sewers as their hell. When the narrator says "these are their final hours" I think he means the hours before their last stand. There is no glimmer of hope in the sewer. They pretty much immediately get split up and the rest is spinning wheels as they literally asphyxiate on shit. Who they become in the sewer reveals who they were out of it. The census taker reveals himself to view his party only as numbers, the composer reveals himself to be self-centered and defeated, Halinka reveals herself to be a silly girl too in love to think straight, Daisy reveals herself to be the strongest of them all if not for the fact that her love and dedication undoes her.

 

This movie is so potent and toxic and angry it makes me want to read about the Polish Resistance to get a better context for what made Wadja make a movie this fucking dark and cynical. He clearly has respect for them, but this movie is not a tribute to their heroism in the slightest.

 

TL;DR

It's like The Pianist meets The Warriors meets Dante's Inferno meets Dead Space. A+, would watch again.

 

This movie is some heavy stuff guys. The scenes in the sewer are relentlessly grim and claustrophobic and that final shot of the Lieutenant going back down for his men is haunting. Considering how the events of the Warsaw Uprising unfolded, I'd say the tone is pretty appropriate. The first half of the movie above ground didn't really grab me though. I mean it was good to see how the characters talked up facing death compared to their desperation and crushed spirits in the end, but I didn't find that section itself very engaging. Though ironically one of the scenes I really loved was above ground, when the lieutenant was looking over that barrier at the German tanks and that kid was so nonchalantly talking about how they'd be overrun soon while he emptied out dirt from his boots.

 

I don't have much to say on the individual character arcs other than that they were all appropriately depressing in their own way with the exception of the composer, whose final scenes I thought were a bit much...I didn't really buy his insanity and there was one or two too many dramatic zooms to closeups of his face. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it's never really clear how long they spend down there. I suppose this may be deliberate and for the most part the lack of a sense of time benefits the movie, but it makes the guys mental collapse a bit unbelievable/heavy handed.

 

Also I had no idea those little Goliath tanks were a thing that existed.

 

I think the ultimate cynicism in this movie is that the composer, the most pessimistic and solipsistic character, is ultimately the most correct. In the world of Kanal, the only rational response to the horrors of such overwhelming defeat is to give up. He's already retreated into himself so far by the time we first meet him ("this is the REAL tragedy", he declares when he finds himself wanting for musical inspiration), the rest of the movie is just a matter of the others catching up. So, in that respect, I definitely buy his descent into madness. I just think it's not as far a fall down as it was for the others. 

 

And I do agree that the multiple zooms became a bit much. I appreciate what they add to the surreality of the sewers, but so many zooms in such short time does get a little silly.

 

Kanal gripped me to such an extent I had to write a bigger piece on it, which I'll also publish on Filmadeus. And I also want to see the rest of Wajda's War trilogy.

 

---

 

Film_284w_Kanal_original.jpg

 

Kanal opens on German flamethrowers from a distance, setting alight a Polish town. There are no people running or screaming, no characters at all, just the fiery volleys and collapsing structures. The message is clear: the year is 1944 and terror stalks this country. We follow a militia of ordinary men set to oppose the occupier, but in the first line of narration learn their fight is hopeless and these men and women will die.
 
And indeed, fatalism hangs over all of them. Hunted down to a shell of a garrison, the platoon tries to maintain spirits through music, booze or love, all while waiting for the inevitable. When the fortress is lost, the troops retreat into the titular underground canals, desperate to escape to fight another day.
 
What hellish, subterranean maze have these people unknowingly entered? The canals were reported to be safe, and indeed the enemy dares not follow, but it turns out to be a torturous death trap. Someone quotes Dante, but I'm more reminded of the works of Jheronimus Bosch. The people, some of them wounded, split up. Other survivors drop in, oftentimes running and screaming about gas. No one knows where to go. The fumes are choking. Desperation and paranoia set in.
 
The characters aren't deeply developed, and I think this is both because of the ensemble cast nature of the film, but also to allow for easier connection to the audience. They're archetypes, rather than characters. The artist, the commander, the drunk soldier, the smuggler, the volunteer not taken seriously. Everyday people like us, and like we would they're breaking down. Why is it so fascinating to watch these people engage with their ordeal, each in their own way? To see some of their vanities stripped away and others consume them?
 
It's here that Kanal shows its true colors: this isn't a war movie, but a horror film. In its depiction of a group of people running scared through a closed environment and slowly getting picked off by unseen enemies and unknowable forces, it prefigures later genre works such as Cube and even the Silent Hill video games. And there's indeed something very disturbing about this World War 2 setting. The characters' torment is understandable and they're slowly losing their mind. The artist and the drunkard are only the first to go; the former disappearing into the sewer in a fugue state, playing the ocarina, the latter sinking in liquor and scared out of his wits.
 
And for good reason. There's something almost metaphysical about the Nazi enemy. We never see them up close (up until the very end), and their role in the film is that of an elemental force of horror. They send infernal puppet tanks strapped to an umbilical cord to clear out the hiding place. The only early time we see a German soldier his face is instantly gored beyond recognition by a stone. At the hands of the artist no less – a commentary on the beastly nature of even the most delicate souls in these circumstances. Once in the sewers, their threat becomes one with the ghastliness of the environment. They (apparently) spill gas into the tunnels, they drop grenades down manholes and shoot anyone who dares head for the light. We never leave the perspective of the militia, so when a tunnel wall collapses and a flood of grime washes in, is it an act of the enemy, or of God?
 
Each fragment of the original party eventually meets their end, distributed in the flavors ironic, soul-crushing or bone-chilling. When at last the original commander of the unit surfaces, the only one to do so safely, he realizes he's lost everyone and, his spirit broken, slinks back into the hellhole he just escaped from. He does so bathed in utter silence, and only when the screen cuts to black does music crash in with a final shriek, as if suddenly recognizing the atrocity of it all.
 
I don't know any of Wajda's other movies, but Kanal, taken on its own, is an expression of utter loathing. A resentment for history and what we do to one another. Wajda makes his characters wade through human sludge for most of the movie, he shows them at their weakest and most fragile. There is much compassion inside the claustrophobic chutes and between the characters, but not much regard for what happens to them. Did Wajda make this film to get the war out of his system? But what irony that a descent in such incredible filth and shit could be so riveting and beautifully shot! Kanal is a fascinating treat, a wartime horror film made from a place of genuine, chilling, historic revulsion.

 

Loved reading this. Good point on the elemental force of the Nazis. After that stock footage opening and that insane display of rubble that used to be Poland in the opening tracking shot (what a fun contrast to Ophul's opening tracking shot in Madame De...!), it's not even like they're fighting men, it's like the entire world is ending and they're fighting the apocalypse.

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Interesting about the multiple zooms (which also caught my attention, because how could they not and that was the point of them), and also about the entire character of the artist, is that he's about the only melodramatic note in the film. This is quite a dramatic contrast: consider how every other character endures the same ordeal, but he is the only one zoomed in upon. He's the only one that reacts with such a flippant descent into madness. The rest of the characters are quiet and stoic: no tears, no freak-outs, no hysteria. Just morose resignation, or the desire to swiftly plow on until the end. It's like they're afraid of attracting death if they make too much noise, if they show too overtly how desperate their situation is. And it was so refreshing and good. It may sounds insane, but I loved that no one vomited. In a modern movie everyone would vomit upon entering the sewer, because lazy writing & cliché, "how else would I show my characters are in distress and dislike their surroundings?".

 

On a personal level I liked how the artist was treated, but then I have no problems with a bit of melodrama. It heightened the metaphysicality of the film, which I consider appropriate.

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This is probably too small of a detail to focus on (and too much of a "movies these days are bad while old movies are good" sort of thing too), but I was so impressed by the use of long takes in the film to build tension. The average shot length of Kanal is 22.38 seconds. To compare it to some films from the same year, the ASL of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is 12.5 seconds and Bergman's Wild Strawberries is 9.5 seconds. Most Hollywood films of the same era come in around 7-8 seconds, and more recent big-budget films coming in even lower (Iron Man: 3.66 seconds, Saw II: 1.74 seconds). 

 

I couldn't help thinking how some of the scenes filmed in a single long take would have been filmed by a director of a recent big-budget film. The scene on the rooftops as the company runs frantically from cover to cover while the camera just slowly tracks along with their progress is so perfect. Today, it would likely have been filmed on a handheld camera with shots lasting about a second and a half. 

 

Anyway, I've become Andy Rooney now. Get off my lawn.

 

P.S.: All ASL data shamelessly stolen from Cinemetics

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Oh yeah, the frenetic cutting in a lot of movies these days drives me nuts. The Bourne Ultimatum averages 2.2 seconds per shot. Barf. The long takes in Madam De... stood out to me more but even that one averaged "only" 16 seconds. Guess it speaks to how engrossing the scenes in Kanal were.

 

I think regarding the artist, overall I agree with what Roderick said about him up to the point where he actually snaps. At that point it might as well have been somebody vomiting...it just came across a bit too cliche and combined with all the preceding zooms just made me feel like the film was getting in my face saying "Look at this guy he's cuh-razy! See what this place does to people?!" I see where you guys are coming from though...I think it's just a matter of personal taste.

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It's the most heightened moment for sure. It just felt right for the character.

 

As for vomit, I was going to say that they couldn't really show people puking their brains out in 1957, but holy cow is this movie graphic. When the Germans drop the grenade down the hole and the one guy's blood BATHES Halinka and her lover, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I had forgotten it, for that matter.  

 

I think the fact that no one really mentions the smell is interesting, because they're essentially wading in shit. In a more naturalistic movie (like the hypothetical modern version Roderick mentions) the smell would definitely be one of the first things mentioned, but it really doesn't need saying. I think most of the characters are in denial about how bad their situation is before they enter.

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I thought that was poo-water getting splashed all over them but maybe I'm thinking of a different scene. There's a note in the movie's Wikipedia article that once Stalin died government censorship got more relaxed which let this movie happen...though nobody's hating on the Russians for sitting back and letting the Nazis steamroll them. I don't know much about censorship in Poland at the time maybe they were more tolerant of violence on screen? Was there a USSR version of the Hays Code?

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I think there's one moment where one of the characters makes a mildly pro-communist remark, and that's it for any ideological statement for the rest of the movie.

 

And yes, Halinka splashed with blood is really graphic, and it barely fazes her.

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I was trying to think of specifically what it was about the way the sewer is shot that struck me as surreal, and the Criterion essay pointed it out to me:

 

Jerzy Lipman’s expressionist cinematography, wresting a less than realistic chiaroscuro from an infernal pitch darkness, searingly combines the visions of Piranesi and Georges de la Tour

 

The lighting! There wouldn't be any light down there at all in real life, but the whole movie is beautifully lit in high contrast whites and blacks.

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Like Roderick (very briefly) mentioned, I really liked how over and over again the Germans had apparently dropped gas into the sewers, because people were always fleeing from it and warning the soldiers not to go on ahead, but they always push on and there's never any gas, just a sewer that's all too happy to swallow them. To me that was sort of a microcosm of the whole movie. Even though obviously what you ought to do is retreat in the face of the gas (otherwise you will just choke and die), it turns out you can ignore the warnings and simultaneously be fine (no gas kills you) but also undone (because there is no escape waiting for you). There's hope and relief in the sense that you always manage to avoid the danger you're expecting, but also a deep hopelessness inherent in the situation t hat you just make worse by pushing forward and discovering that things are safe.

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Interesting point.

 

The gas warnings start right away when the team enters the sewer. At that point you're still invested in a 'normal' world with normal rules and people acting rationally. It's only later that you realize the screaming people have already lost it and there probably never was any gas. The gas scare is effective because the film employs it at a moment where you're still doubtful about the rules of the world.

 

About pushing on: the sewer never explicitly heads in any direction. There's mention of another town, but oftentimes I got the feeling they were reappearing at earlier points, running in circles. The groups of people run into the same obstacles, notably a dying/dead soldier, but all in all it's a vague remix of the same elements in various states of decay.

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While taking a shower just now, suddenly a remark Patrick made jumped at me. You said Kanal was a film that felt remarkably 'modern', and I do agree. But then I thought it also very overtly refers back to the earliest phases of film, notably German expressionism, films made in the tens of the previous century. Expressionism in film was typefied by its exaggerated decor that served not just as artful backdrop (originating from theater), but more notably as an expression of the characters' emotional states. It's special effect more than scenery. Kanal felt the same in this regard; the sewers aren't just an environment, they're a purposeful metaphor for what the characters are experiencing. You were right, Patrick, Kanal is both modern and classical.

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You're absolutely right about the expressionist aspect. Above ground every piece of rubble and broken building is reproduced (or, probably in some cases, just filmed as it remained in 1957) in loving detail (right down to specific brand of piano they find), but once they get down into the sewers the setting becomes about reflecting their state of mind much more than capturing the specificity of a mid-century sewer system. As surreal as it is, it didn't occur to me to tie it back to expressionism because I tend to associate expressionistic influence with films that are way less naturalistic.

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Yes, and Kanal absolutely puts you on the wrong foot with its opening half hour, which is 100% without heightened sense of reality and seems to head into war drama. Then, boom. I love how it throws you like that, you really have no idea what's waiting for you when you first hit the sewers.

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Finally came around to watch this movie.

The first part sure is boring as hell. The turn it takes after they go down the sewers is amazing.

 

There was one part where I had to rewind. At some point a man and a woman reach a smaller passage ("this is our sewer") where they go through. And then suddenly the man slips away a goes back to the beginning. A few moments later you properly see the passage was indeed going up quite steep. This didn't register to me at all up to that point. So I watched that part again, and I can only conclude that this special effect was indeed present. Quite cool.

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The first part sure is boring as hell. The turn it takes after they go down the sewers is amazing.

 

I'm not sure that was what I was getting at. I certainly don't consider the first part boring.

 

And I was surprised by the steepness of the passage as well! You don't realize it until the man start's sliding down.

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