Wajda’s Danton is at least three things: a historical work that attempts to interpret a key conflict in the French Revolution through a distillation of its details and minor, domestic moments; a direct condemnation on the authoritarian Communist regime of Poland; and a Brechtian shock to the audience, to remind us that we are ultimately the ones who allow dictatorship to flourish or fail, either in 1794 or 1983 or any other time.

As a historical distillation, Danton succeeds in its attention to the minor details (even if Wajda distorts some of the major points in an effort to gain more narrative drama), its intense sense of paranoia and tragedy, and its subtle allusions to how the Revolution got to the point that the film covers and what will happen after the credits roll, so to speak. The production designers and costumers should be applauded for their efforts in recreating the world of the French Revolution as it existed in 1794, which is much different than had the film taken place in 1789 or even 1792. The abundance of Phrygian caps, tri-colour cockades, and striped pants immediately immerse the viewer in this time and place, whether or not the viewer is aware of the significance of these details. It is a testament to the trust that the filmmakers put in their audience that hardly anything is explained, actually. The story begins in media res and proceeds at a brisk clip. The elements of the film speak to the attitude of the time; there is no need for Wajda to explain it all. For instance, the film begins with a scene of sans-culottes inspecting carriages that are waiting to enter Paris. The sans-culottes are gruff and foreboding and the scene is scored with an ominous, almost droning piece of music as Danton enters the city and see the guillotine looming large over the Place de la Revolution from his carriage. Immediately, we understand the mood of the city, the danger of the times, and that the Revolution has descended into the Reign of Terror.

The finale of the film is a tour-de-force of historic filmmaking. From Danton and his comrades being prepared for execution in the prison until the end of the film, Wajda manages to comment on the sanguinary and chillingly non-chalant aspects of the Terror, the fate of the characters who are left standing, the betrayal of the Rights of Man, how Robespierre and the Committees of Public Safety and General Security governed and instilled dogma, and the panic and distress felt by actual people who were actually executed by guillotine. From the beginning of the scene, Danton and his fellow prisoners have their hair and collars cut in order to clear space for the guillotine to drop. This scene is slowly paced and we are able to contemplate the despair of the situation. As the group is led out to the guillotine, scenes of a sickly Robespierre hiding his face beneath a sheet in his bed are intercut. The build-up led me to think that we would see some histrionics on the guillotine, some last words and what-not. Instead, Wajda imposes a sense of doom by showing the executioners prepare the guillotine, including spreading out hay beneath the platform to sop up the blood that will soon flow through the cracks between the wood planks above. The camera momentarily lingers on the supporting post, which is already stained with blood from previous executions. We see the condemned men gaze up at the guillotine and then an abrupt cut shows a head dropping into a basket and the razor rise, showing a bloody stump where a head used to be. This happens again. We do not even see who is being executed, we only know that this is summary justice delivered quickly and without pomp or any sense that this is out of the ordinary. The only character who is given more camera time is Danton himself, which makes sense because his last words to the executioner are actually well-known. This also serves the purpose of showing how a victim would be loaded into the guillotine, once again adding to that foreboding feeling that carries through the entire film.

Upon the execution of Danton, the last we see, Saint-Just enters Robespierre’s room to announce their victory. Robespierre is despondent over the course that the Revolution has taken while Saint-Just is ebullient. And here Wajda offers a very clever and subtle hint at the fate that will befall these temporary victors and masters of the Revolution. To Robespierre’s despondency, Saint-Just jokingly suggests that he should blow his brains out, a comment that Robespierre takes in stride. As Saint-Just leaves the room, Robespierre tells him to go quietly as he leaves. With these two lines, seemingly throw-away lines at that, Wajda has his characters announce their own fate: during the Thermidor Reaction (which will take place within months of the execution of Danton), Robespierre seriously injures his jaw in a suicide attempt when he tried to shoot himself before being arrested. Saint-Just, on the other hand, famously let himself be quietly arrested. Wajda then shows Lucille Desmoulins, widow of Camille Desmoulins, at the site of the guillotine where she had just witnessed her husband’s execution. She turns to the camera and looks directly at the lens as she ties a red thread around her neck, signaling her own imminent execution and the awareness that the Revolution has hopelessly descended into an orgy of blood and retribution.

This sequence of scenes closes with Robespierre’s mistress, Eleonore, bringing her nephew to Robespierre’s bedside. She says that he has something to share with Robespierre and the child begins to recite the Rights of Man. However, the film began with this child being drilled by Eleonore as he is being bathed. He attempts to say the lines but falters, only to have his hands smacked. At the end of the film, he is able to recite the Rights of Man without faltering. With this bookend device, Wajda shows how Robespierre and the Committees took what began as a declaration of rights and drilled the ideology into the people without any respect for its meaning. The lip-service was there, but the actions of the Committees violated the Rights in the name of defending them. Robespierre himself had a very moralistic and paternalistic attitude toward leadership, as if the French people were like the small child who is slapped until he can recite the Rights of Man by rote, without understanding the meaning of the Rights themselves.

This review is getting a bit long, but I wanted to comment on the other aspects of the film: the commentary on Poland and the Brechtian devices used. Quickly, the film began production in Poland but was forced to move to France when a hardline Communist regime took over as a reaction to the Solidarity movement. The parallels between the French Revolution and Communism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states such as Poland are obvious, and Wajda makes it explicit in the film with one quick, passing moment in the film. Robespierre is seen at the studio of the artist Jacques-Louis David, posing for a portrait. However, he leaves in a hurry and on his way out notices the unfinished canvas for David’s The Tennis Court Oath. Robespierre stops and claims that Fabre d’Eglantine was not present for that famous incident, even though he is on the canvas. Fabre is one of Danton’s co-defendants and is currently on trial at the time of this scene. David counters that Fabre was indeed present, but Robespierre insists he was not, tells David to remove him from the canvas, and leaves. With this scene, Wajda draws a very clear parallel to Stalin’s infamous re-creation of history by removing those who had fallen out of favour from photographs.

Lastly, Wajda addresses his audience directly throughout the film by having his actors stare into the camera. Danton does it at his trial, Lucille Desmoulins does it at the end of the film, and most effectively, the young boy does it at the end of the film as he recites the Rights of Man. This Brechtian tactic breaks the illusory 4th wall and calls out to the audience reminding us that the events of the film, while dramatized, were real, that there was such a thing as the Reign of Terror, that these events have repeated with successive dictatorships in many eras and many countries, that it is still happening, and that it is up to an active citizenship to deter it from ever happening again.