Ashes And Diamonds (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts 30.2 extract: Ashes And Diamonds (1958)

A masterfully constructed piece of cinema, Ashes and Diamonds follows a Polish resistance soldier on the last day of WWII. In such, this story explores the utter disarray of Poland and its people who are challenged to find hope and reason in the new and forthcoming days of the post-WWII era. 

Though this didn't strike me on a narrative level as much as it did an aesthetic one, I can see why many claim that this is the greatest, if not one of the finest, Polish films of all time. The management of space and the expression of images through lighting and composition is stunning throughout this film. This adds depths before personality to the characters and so the plot seems to meander on for quite some time. However, by the third act and as I started to gather the many pieces of this film together, I felt that there was more to the story than I initially picked up on and so I feel I need to re-watch this before providing a solid opinion.