I saw this film in a film festival in Dhaka, in early sixties(Now Bangladesh, then East Pakistan). For me as a student, Sattayjit Ray's Apu trilogy was my only exposer to any kind of art film then. Visual realism was a new thing for us in Indian sub continent. Audience were so spellbound that they could smell sewage sitting in the cinema hall. I think like all great directors, Wajda had the cinematographic sense to create that environment where viewers reality could blend with creative fiction. In post war period of late forties and in early fifties like the School of Polish Posters, all creative mediums went through this fatalistic phase. It was grotesque but realistic.

Did Andrzej Wajda predict the modern horror film? Or was he merely acting on--and manipulating--our fear of the big, scary monster? There are many shots in KANAL where the camera will simply stay on a passageway seconds after the survivors leave the shot. As a modern audience who has lived through horror films, we expect a Nazi or a monster to slip into the frame in the background, but it never does. KANAL truly is a horror film, but what's unbearable to us and the sturdy group of Resistance fighters isn't the Nazis above the sewers or the metaphorical monster, but it is the solitude and emptiness that drives them to insanity, death or a bitter end.KANAL is Andrzej Wajda's dirty, bloody valentine to the heroes of the 1944 Warsaw Resistance as the film follows the last hours of a band of heroes in their ultimately futile attempt to escape the Nazis through the labyrinth of underground sewers. We are first introduced to them as strong, willful humans trying to survive in a world that's falling to ruins (One could also argue that Andrzej Wajda also created the first post-apocalypse film). They laugh, they love, they play music in the last happy moments of their lives. After they enter the sewers, we expect and want them to come out even more strong-willed than ever--how many people can face dead bodies floating in the water of a dirty sewer with the same calm defiance? But as time goes on and the group gets separated, it becomes more and more inevitable that these heroes are not meant for a Hollywood's movie's happy, redemptive ending.Andrzej Wajda, like Roman Polanski, was a real survivor of the Nazi invasion of Poland during WWII, and both became filmmakers who brought their experiences to films, as Polanski did with Oscar-winning THE PIANIST. However, Polanski's film, though absolutely profound, doesn't have Wajda's eye for details--the scenes of ruined Warsaw, for example, seem almost CGI'ed and it's obvious that he's trying to go for more, while Wajda will focus solely on the dirty ground, the debris blowing in the wind, or the flames of a burning building in the background. With Wajda, less is much more effective. If there is a situation more dirty, awful, lonely, scary or haunting than these people making their way through the labyrinths, I have yet to see it.

I live in Poland, I saw most of Wajda's movies and still I don't get why everyone thinks that he is such great director when I find pretty much all his movies poorly narrated and not easy to fully understand "Kanal" is good example of my problem with Wajda's movies - he recreates images from his own past that he knows well and don't bother that the viewer may know less than he is, f.e.1. all the young rebels were scouts or just children from Warsaw, but there were few officers and we don't know if they were soldiers or just seniors scouts2. they were receiving orders to defend this part of the city but we don't know from who, we don't know if the HQ knew their situation, etc3. there is no any sight of Germans except for a tank and mobile machines at the beginning, but there is no explanation why those machines were dangerous or what number of Germans were attacking this part of the town, how big was that part of town4. they were trying to move to Srodmiescie (district of Warsaw), but we don't know how far was it, we don't know what situation was there5. how many people went down the canals, how many did survived, how long where they going to Srodmiescie (2 hours, 5 hours, 10 days??)And in other Wajda's movies is same routine - lack of narration that leads to confusion or misunderstanding the true historical situation... I know Polish history pretty well (since I learned it at school) and since I have such problem I can only imagine how foreigners must feel when they watch his movies.

With much thanks owed to some excellent set decoration, this Polish film has a very authentic feel to it, and it is all captured well by the cinematographer, with great angels and good use of panning. The film has a number of striking moments as well as some solid bits of character study. The final fifteen or so minutes are dragged out beyond reason, but there is not much other than this and the noticeably non-professional acting that weigh against this incredible, very different cinematic experience. It is well done generally all round, even on an audio level, with some great sound work and music choices to accompany the action.