A nearly illiterate woman becomes one of the founders of Poland's Solidarity union.
Volker Schlöndorff has found renewed inspiration in the true stories of overlooked heroes. His last film, The Ninth Day, was a revelation, chronicling the struggle of a Catholic priest who expired in the hellhole of Auschwitz. STRIKE tells the story of the beginnings of Poland's Solidarity movement through the little-known figure of Anna Walentynowicz, here renamed Agnieszka Kowalska and played by Katharina Thalbach. The actions of this feisty shipyard worker from Gdansk were integral to setting Poland on the course to democracy.
Agnieszka, a welder, is a loyal and dedicated worker and a perennial "Heroine of Labour." Taunted by her peers for being such a paragon of virtue, she nonetheless advocates tirelessly for workers' rights without much reward. Living alone with her teenage son, she spends her days on endless, repetitive tasks, but a glimmer of joy arrives when a happy-go-lucky, trumpet-playing newcomer takes an apartment in her block and the two start a relationship.
Her politicization begins when she witnesses the aftermath of an industrial accident in which many of her fellow workers die and their widows are denied any pensions. She begins to confront the authorities and watches warily as a groundswell of outrage builds against the regime's clumsy disciplinary tactics. As one thing leads to another, and as the seventies give way to the eighties, tensions approach a climax in the shipyard.
The film's title is, in part, an homage to Sergei Eisenstein's 1924 masterpiece of the same name, which told the story of exploited workers who laid down their tools. Schlöndorff has an especially fine feel for the numbing grind and noise of industrial work. Parts of STRIKE convey a documentary touch, but his flair for character is never far away. His portrait of Agnieszka is a touching tribute to a working woman who undergoes an important awakening - the realization of an ordinary person who simply looks around her and distinguishes right from wrong. She is not a fiery leader in the mold of a Lech Walesa; rather, she acts as the movement's stoic moral compass, earning respect as a result.
