Several generations of Polish and Polish-Americans have held close the memory of the slaughter of thousands of their generation’s best and brightest by the Red Army armies in a forest on September 17, 1939. Tens of thousands of soldiers died, shot in the back of the head and tumbled into mass graves, and the legacy of their lack of legacy haunts still. Poland’s 2008 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, “Katyn” is the career-capping attempt of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema, now 83, to create a fictional framework that might salve the country’s long-held hurt. DVD reissues of his great early films like “Kanal” and “Ashes and Diamonds” are readily available, and his Solidarity-era “Man of Marble” and “Man of Iron” would make a fine double-disc release. But with “Katyn,” Wajda attempts a feat of collective memory, a stark, chilling exorcism of the epochal, tragic loss of that day. Wajda’s imagery is often blunt but never pat: there’s a reason to frame jackboots the way they’re framed here. Wadja’s father died at Katyn. Decades later, “Katyn” offers hope through making fictions to counter Stalin’s original lies. Based on Andrsej Mularczyk’s novel “Post Mortem.” 121m. (Ray Pride)
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