Review: ‘Warsaw Uprising,’ when Poland fought back

“Warsaw Uprising” is not only a unique, remarkably assembled documentary-narrative hybrid but also a powerful look at the personal and public devastation that can occur during wartime. Movies rarely feel as authentic as this.

Some background: For 63 days in 1944, the Polish Home Army fought — and failed — to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The result was the death of 16,000 Polish resistance fighters and as many as 200,000 Polish civilians. A quarter of the city’s buildings were destroyed by combat.

This Warsaw Uprising was the largest single military effort by any European resistance movement during World War II. But it was tragically undermined by military and governmental blunders in addition to global politics.

Working under the auspices of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, director Jan Komasa and a superb technical team cut, colorized and reconstructed actual newsreel footage from the uprising to create an intensely vivid, evocative portrait of those few months in 1944.

But Komasa and company didn’t stop there. Adding a script by Joanna Pawlu¿kiewicz, Jan O¿dakowski and Piotr C. ¿liwowski , the film takes on a touching, insightful you-are-there narrative told through the eyes and voice-overs of two fictional young Polish reporters and cameramen, brothers Karol (Piotr Adamczyk) and Witek (Józef Pawlowski), and an American airman and Stalag camp escapee, Howard (Jeff Burrell). Various Warsaw citizens and soldiers are also effectively brought to life with bits of dubbed dialogue.

It all adds up to a masterfully wrought chronology of this pivotal conflict and its haunting, faces, places and memories. Fine soundtrack as well.

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“Warsaw Uprising”

MPAA Rating: None.

Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. In Polish and English with English subtitles.

Playing: Laemmle’s Town Center 5, Encino.