Films based on Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s prose are a distinct part of Andrzej Wajda’s body of work. In The Birch Wood, The Maids of Wilko and Sweet Rush, a lesser-known Wajda appears: quiet, impressionist, focused on nature, full of melancholic cogitation on the passing of time. A long and fruitful adventure with the great writer’s work began with The Birch Wood (1970), a film surprising even for the director himself. Many years later, Wajda mentioned that working on the adaptation of Iwaszkiewicz’s short story, taking place in a secluded forester’s lodge, was refreshing, since he could escape from political themes and work on something that he usually had no time for: contemplation of nature. Despite its uniqueness, The Birch Wood remains a true ‘Wajda’ film – visually suggestive, filled with symbolism, referencing the category of myth.
The Birch Wood is based on a series of contrasts and antinomies. The forester Bolesław (Daniel Olbrychski) is a healthy, strong man who lost his will to live after his wife’s death. The mourning protagonist is as if ‘dead for the world’, insensitive to beauty and closed in his shell. It has an impact on his daughter Ola (Elżbieta Żołek). A nightmarish doll with a massacred face, probably the girl’s only toy, is a scary symbol of her childhood. Stanisław (Olgierd Łukaszewicz) is Bolesław’s reverse – enthusiastic and cheerful, he wants to enjoy life in all its forms. Only later on do we learn the cause of this euphoria: the man is ill with tuberculosis and is now in the last stretch, characterized by a temporary improvement. He came from a Swiss sanatorium to his brother’s forester’s lodge only to die.
Paradoxically, the brother’s appearance brings life to Bolesław’s gloomy house. Stanisław brings in a piano, plays with the lonely Ola and starts a romance with the sensual peasant Malina (Emilia Krakowska), the local bruiser’s (Marek Perepeczko) fiancée. But from the beginning, his greedy lust for life is signed with the shadow of death. The sick man’s pale face reveals a mortal illness, his wide smile turns into a grimace of an eerie mask, and his thin body looks pathetic, when it is compared to lumberjack Michał’s impressive muscles. Presenting the slow process of dying, Wajda doesn’t create a pessimistic film, filled only with pain and sadness. Stanisław’s death is inscribed in the cycle of mythical renewal, with its source in nature. The Birch Wood starts with a panorama of a gloomy, snowy landscape, but when the plot unfolds, winter is replaced by a beautiful, blooming spring. Nature has died, but is reborn with a new season. In the protagonist an analogical process takes place: after Stanisław’s death, Bolesław comes back to life. It’s not coincidence that the action takes place around Easter.
