The usual comparison- and inspiration- is with Citizen Kane, but there are important differences. One is that the hero here really is a citizen- a comrade in his own eyes- and the other is the difference in the person trying to learn about him. The reporter in Citizen Kane is an experienced hack who is indifferent except to the front page; Agnieska is at the start of her possible career, making her graduation film, the one which will make her name and determine her future and looking for a story that matters in itself; indeed, Agnieska's story is as important to the film as Birkut's and in some ways her story reflects his. She works as determinedly as any Stakhanovite and the way she binds her helpers- the film crew, archivists, people who knew Birkut- to her in her task and to think it worth doing for themselves means that she creates a shock-force as real as and more effective than Birkut's display team of brickies. Again, the characters we meet who knew Birkut all have a relationship with Poland as well as Birkut and their own careers- building-worker to political prisoner to industrialist; chekist to strip-club manager; propaganda film-director to...film-director; gymnast to drunkard- reflect the changes as they- and communist Poland- age. There's hope- the old cameraman blasted into admiration and respect for Agnieska when she shows she'll do his job for him. Indeed, Agnieska is a wonderful character, her long limbs wrapped round her, carrying "everything I possess" round everywhere, smoking cigarettes avidly, demanding "wide screen, like an American movie"- you can see why the Party and her superiors want her to succeed and why they fear her. Not only that, but the film is fair to Communist Poland- we see Agnieska's home and realise that it is because of the opportunities given by communism that she can leave the boundaries imposed on her railway-worker father, just as Birkut only achieves fame as a worker in a supposedly workers' state. It is because both of them take rhetoric seriously that they are finally unsuccessful. After all, we never do know who sabotaged the bricks and burned Birkut's hands, and it doesn't really matter in a state where rhetoric is what counts.

In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly a proletariat hero, at how that heroism was created, and what became of him. She gets hold of outtakes and censored footage and interviews the man's friends, ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero.

What is to be said about this film? Some say it is anti-communist, but is that really fair? At most, it could be said to be anti-Stalinist, which isn't really the same thing when you get down to it. And because one idealist has faded to obscurity, does that put a shadow over the whole movement? The idea is interesting and of course has some historical parallels, but I can't say it ever fully got my attention and would not be one of my favorite Polish films. I would much more have enjoyed an exposition of a real person rather than some fictional creation.