Samson

In Andrzej Wajda’s 1961 film, “Samson”, the story begins as Jakub goes off to his first day at the University in Warsaw. His skin, hair color and facial features mark him as unquestionably Jewish; within moments of his arrival in a lecture hall filled with rabidly anti-Semitic young Poles, there is evidence that his life is in danger. They hound and taunt the Jew, pushing him down to the ground as they menacingly toss a huge brick just barely above his head. In deflecting the attack, Jakub thrusts the brick away and it strikes and kills another student.

What was unmistakably self-defense brings him a long prison sentence for murder. Making no attempt to plead his innocence (futile though that may have been), his acceptance of guilt sets the stage for the story that follows. Given the chance to place blame elsewhere, only the one willing to pay the price for what he has done can mature into full adulthood as a complete human being.

Serving his sentence in prison, Jakub has two significant human encounters. One is with Pankrat, a political prisoner and dedicated communist in the adjacent cell who sees life as a constant battle to overthrow the tyranny of oppressive regimes. Pankrat’s secure male energy points to a life that does not recognize compromise in pursuit of its goal.

The other encounter is with his cellmate Malina whose decisions all exemplify adaptation. He embezzled funds to pay for his son’s medical care, knowing he was committing a crime and gladly accepting the punishment. He has no quarrel with society nor is he unhappy in prison. His message to the young Jakub is about paying your dues in the world, living without resentment, surviving to meet the tasks of the day.

Where Pankrat’s is the standpoint of the individual versus society, Malina’s embodies that of engagement with the world on terms that are never set but evolve moment to moment. “Samson” demonstrates that both these aspects live in Jakub; the tension that propels the story keeps returning to the question of which will be stronger, when and how.

When the Nazis bomb Warsaw the wardens unlock all the cells and the prisoners stream out into the streets already overcrowded with desperate evacuees. For Jakub this will not eventuate in any freedom- all Poland is now a prison and with the German invasion, Jakub’s new cell is the Ghetto.

As part of the work detail that collects dead bodies from the streets for burial, Jakub finally finds his beloved mother, just moments after she has died. Jakub is overwhelmed with grief and the inner realization of his now total alone-ness.

A man who hopes to escape the Ghetto joins into the burial procession. Unable to scale the high brick wall by himself, he begs for Jakub’s help and encourages him to escape too. Jakub has no desire to try and escape, but now separated from the burial group he is in danger as the armed guards close in with their growling dogs and he too climbs over the wall.

Moving cautiously in the darkening shadows, Jakub is trapped inside a large apartment building when the porter locks the doors for curfew. Jakub goes up to the roof to hide and through a skylight sees a party in progress. Discovered, he is unexpectedly invited to join in the drinking and card games; exhausted, he falls asleep in a chair.

After all the others have gone, Lucyna, the hostess, informs Jakub that unbeknownst to her Aryan guests she, too, is a Jew. She dispels his illusion that everything outside the ghetto is light and reveals the constant anxiety in which she lives, ever fearful that her dissembling will be found out. She rejects his desire to return to the ghetto, insisting valiantly for a vision of freedom and life that their moment in time cannot support.

Lucyna is determined to make Jakub her lover and to find a way to save them both; already at the end of her own resolve, she finds new energy and inspiration through her fantasy of the young man and their imagined life. She cuts and bleaches her hair, creating an even more perfect persona emblem of non-Jewishness. Dressed in white, she goes out to secure the means and arrange for their escape to a friend’s country estate, where she believes they can wait out the war, safe from harm.

This brief experience with a woman questing to survive the war is his first major post-prison test, the initial opportunity to outrun his own race. Lucyna pits the temptation of warm flesh against the pull of solidarity with his branded fellows. For Jakub personal freedom carries no transfiguring image. In prison for murder, he knew he was innocent and how little that actually mattered. He knows that he cannot be free while the ghetto exists. Jakub does not wait for Lucyna’s return.

Down in the street his life is saved again by a band of Yuletide performers who cover Jakub’s face with one of their masks as a German patrol rounds the corner. He says he wants to return to the ghetto, and they explain he cannot do it there like that: they will all suffer. They lead him to a house on the boundary of the ghetto’s wall. There the man who cautiously and, no doubt, profitably helps a few of the ghetto’s captives to escape and smuggles in food and contraband convinces Jakub of the futility of returning. Life itself, so apparently absent, will not let Jakub meet the fate he is willing to face.

Now he has nowhere to go but to Malina’s, accepting a long-ago offer of shelter and hospitality meant for circumstances less dire. Somehow, he manages to get to the apartment undetected, where he is welcomed warmly and without hesitation by the old man and his adolescent niece, Kazia, who instantly develops a crush on the young stranger. It is Christmas Eve and Kazia imagines that Jakub is her gift, solace against the loneliness of the entrapping apartment she is not allowed to leave. The next day Jakub is seen when Kazia opens the door while Malina is out. Jakub insists he must leave but Malina convinces him to hide in cellar, an underground prison where he will hopefully be secure. Trapped in the basement, through long days and nights equally dark, outside time, awake and asleep at once, jakub gathers resolve for some as yet unknown purpose

Both Lucyna and Kazia seek to enclose Jakub in the confines of personal emotion; they want to build a life of coupled fulfillment, separated from the incalculable disaster of what is going on outside. Lucyna finds her way to Malina’s where Kazia denies any knowledge of Jakub or his whereabouts. Kazia’s sorrow at separation from Jakub is instantly transformed into blind happiness when she realizes that Lucyna believes her and departs. Kazia is still too young to understand the limits of personal story.

Lucyna has the revelation that in this atmosphere flight cannot lead anywhere and gives herself up to the Gestapo, reveling her identity as a Jew, meaning, of course, certain death. Meanwhile, Kazia, scheming ever more to keep Jakub with her (while concealing from him the news of Malina’s accidental death) trims his hair, thinking she can tidy him up and bring him into the lonely apartment, but is finally herself locked in the basement as Jakub flees to witness the last embers of the ghetto that has been burned to the ground after the uprising.

Wandering the streets with now no literal ghetto to return to, Jakub makes his way to the railroad tracks but cannot bring himself to jump into the path of the oncoming train. He is not afraid to die, but does not want to die just for having the face of a Jew.

Hounded by a gang of children, Jakub is recognized by a former fellow prisoner and taken to the hideout of the communists, headed by Pankrat. There he is brought face to face with what Pankrat had adumbrated in their brief prison dialog. These are men prepared at any moment to give their lives in the service of a cause. Wanting above all to live while being unqualifiedly willing to die is what endows these committed ideologues with strength.

Before leaving to distribute their illegal pamphlets, Pankrat, unrecognized by Jakub, shows him the grenades that are to be detonated should the Nazis discover this hiding place; no one is to come out alive. When the Nazis do appear and discover the banned presses, Jakub realizes that this is the moment all his imprisonment has readied him for, his instant to incarnate as the Samson bringing the godless down. He detonates the grenades, killing all the Nazis while he is crushed under a falling beam as the entire building caves in.

In no way does Wajda diminish the genuineness of personal life and private encounter. However, his vision supports the understanding that- when there is a battle to the death under way- preserving one’s individual earthly existence is not the primary value. Yes, Jakub was a Jew during the Holocaust, meaning that he was condemned to perish in a ghetto or concentration camp. Intended to die a passive, victimized death, his journey has taught him that, with sufficient boldness and alertness, he can choose the circumstances of his death. He will die because of the Nazis, but not without exacting his revenge.

Thus, he purposefully concludes his journey by accomplishing through deliberate action what in killing the student at the University was a mere extension of self-protection. He has learned that being a man has little to do with winning under untenable circumstances, but everything to do with finding the right moment to act. He has become the mythic figure that gives the film its name.