While audiences outside Poland are unlikely to be aware of the historical echoes that resound through Andrzej Wajda's film of The Wedding…, and will certainly miss a fair number of its jokes and references, Wajda's achievement is to make the original event, extraordinary and uneasy as it must have seemed at the time, not only accessible but also hauntingly significant to the present. His film shudders with menace and regret, a lament for the Polish predicament both as it was in 1900 after yet another century of being used as Europe's doormat, and as it is now, its independence as elusive as ever. And setting aside nationalism entirely, The Wedding turns out to have its global metaphors as well, defined by the contrasts between the obsessive, raucous celebrations and the forces slowly gathering in the surrounding gloom.

The film begins with a torrent of jubilation and tumbling images before...