Kanal seems to me, except for one minor flaw, as perfect an antiwar film as was ever made. (p. 21)

The wretched troop [of the Warsaw Uprising] sloshes about [in the sewers] waist-deep in muck, in abysmal darkness, and totally unsure of their way and of what will await them above, if they ever make it. Their sufferings, loyalties, weaknesses, quarrels, heroism, and hopes begotten on despair would suggest little fluctuation from the prevailing note of catastrophe. Yet Wajda is able to evoke such a range of human reactions to this overarching doom, he can show such various shadings of courage, such nuances of discouragement and grief, that we can all locate ourselves on this scale of human responses to disaster; and we are given both a foretaste of our individual dying and an overwhelming taste of our common mortality.

The one false note is struck by an artist...