- Synopsis fail: the important thing is not that Kuklinski drew up those plans but that he gave those plans to the CIA over a period of nine years, ultimately playing a large part in the downfall of the Soviet Union. Or so this film posits. As I discovered earlier this week, porn on Finnish television also apparently led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Opinions are varied on this subject, apparently.
- I really don’t know enough about Polish history. Despite the obvious monopoly European history plays on history classes in North America, you only ever learn about Poland in the context of the Holocaust — which is to say, you get a five year window in which a small segment of the population is discussed. Cold war dialogue is dominated by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. so, again, you hear very little about anyone else. (Solution: I need to read more books.) Speaking of which, the Polish Army Museum is one of the better museums I’ve ever been to and definitely worth a look if you’re ever in Warsaw.
- I nodded off for a bit at the start because I was apparently very tired, but once I woke up I found the movie pretty engaging. As is probably evident, I love the cold war, espionage, intrigue, communists, etc. and so this movie obviously fed into that in a major way.
- I’m quite convinced they stole the piano score from JFK. Even weirder still was that young pictures of Kuklinski looked like Gary Oldman as Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, so my mind kept making weird parallels between the two and each individual’s role in the grand scheme of political super powers and who was a patsy and who wasn’t, etc.
- The weird montages of historical footage and maps shown from inside of a fake control room were not great and didn’t really fit in with the rest of the movie. I could have done without the animated sequences as well.
- There were a couple of shots of the Palace of Culture and Science for all the Stalin-hating Poles in the audience. This building kills me.
- Kuklinski was cremated and had an amazing wooden urn with a fabulous Polish crest on it.
- They were able to assemble a really impressive collection of top-level Polish generals, CIA operatives, and other people involved with such highly classified politics. The director said during the Q&A that at first most of them refused to participate and but when one of them got suckered into it by saying he wasn’t scared to appear in the film, the rest of them followed suit in an obvious display of silly machismo.
- I really hate Q&A moderators who can’t even repeat audience questions properly. Summarising a long-winded question is one thing; completely missing the point of the question is another.
- IMDB suggests that if I like this movie, I will also enjoy The Sum of All Fears, Goldeneye, and… Gene Kelly: Anatomy of a Dancer.
War Games and the Man Who Stopped Them
Sorry, I can’t not love this subject matter.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A story about Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a talented strategist who became not only privy to the most heavily guarded strategic plans of the Warsaw Pact in the 1970s, but in fact drew up those plans himself.