Korczak

A film set in Warsaw. Janusz Korczak is a doctor and educator. He runs an orphanage and had a children's programme on the radio. The war begins. The programme is closed. Because he is Jewish he has to move into the ghetto. The orphanage goes with him. From there the film is a story of managing. Two hundred children, one building, and steadily less food. Korczak goes out every day. He goes door to door asking for money and food. He asks the rich. He asks black marketeers. He asks German officials when he has to. Pride is not his concern. There is an order inside the orphanage. The children have their own court, their own newspaper and their own parliament. That is his principle: a child is not a candidate for adulthood but already a person. He is offered escape many times. False papers ready, a place arranged outside. He refuses. If the children stay he stays. What the narrative is interested in is not heroism but continuity: its idea is that the man kept doing the same work until the last day; teaching lessons, running games, setting the cleaning rota. The children stage a play. A text about death, and that is a deliberate choice. In the summer of 1942 the ghetto begins to be emptied. The orphanage lines up. Korczak at the front, the children behind, walking with a flag. They board a train. The film is in black and white. The screenplay is by Agnieszka Holland. The last scene caused argument. The narrative shows the train and then an image of the children leaving the wagon and spreading across a field; some critics at Cannes read it as covering over the truth. Wojciech Pszoniak plays the part without exalting it at any point. Wojciech Pszoniak, Ewa Dałkowska and Teresa Budzisz-Krzyżanowska are in the cast. Andrzej Wajda directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes wartime history and Polish cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an easy watch; the narrative is heavy, long, and offers consolation nowhere.