----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I do not have access to many American or European reviews of Kieslowski's "White" (I am writing from Poland) and I wonder if any of the reviewers picked up on what I believe to be a fairly strong reference to Wajda's "Ashes and Diamonds" in that film. I am referring to the garbage dump scene in "White". For those of you that did not see Wajda's "Ashes", the film ends with Maciek, the hero from the Polish Home Army (the underground army that resisted first the Nazi occupation, and then the Communist take over), dying on a garbage heap. This had the "politically correct" connotation for the Communists of the Polish Romantic hero dying on the garbage heap of history. Wajda managed to give an additional symbolic level to this death by having Maciek die in the fetus position, i.e. implying his story may not be over yet. In Kieslowski's "White", the garbage heap of history is much higher, as the Socialist State has been added to it. And it seems to me Maciek is indeed reborn as Karol. Karol arrives on the garbage heap scrunched up in a suitcase, thus in the fetus position. His romanticism has also been killed in France. The whole French episode seems symbolic of the fruitless attraction Poles have had with that country since the late Middle Ages when they elected a prince of the Angevin dynasty to the Polish throne who ended up fleeing the country as soon as there was a royal vacancy at home (Nor should we forget that Polish troops first landed in Haiti at Napoleon's behest to put down a slave revolt). The question of course is what direction does the new Polish hero take upon leaving the garbage heap of history? One Polish critic noted a semblence between Karol and Charlie Chaplin. It so happens Karol is Polish for Charles. The Poland depicted in "White" that this rather humorless Charlie Chaplin comes to, however, seems quite a lot like something out of "The Gold Rush", with its rabid capitalism. A pessimist would say this means Poland has taken a reverse course from the garbage heap. An optimist would conclude that sometimes you have to take a step backwards in order to leap ahead. Certainly Poland is a much more colorful place now even if its citizens do ache under the strain of the changes.