A prominent foreign correspondent faces the breakdown of both his private life and professional career.
The film is set in the 1960s and introduces a prominent journalist working as a foreign correspondent. His public professional identity forms the basis of the story.
The journalist reports from the third world, covering wars, revolutions, and guerrilla movements. His work places him in historically volatile environments.
The synopsis contrasts the importance of his international reporting with the deterioration of his personal life. The professional sphere remains active while his private situation worsens.
The central conflict is defined by the simultaneous collapse of the journalist's personal life and career. The available synopsis does not provide further scene-level details.
A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being "unwanted" parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no explanations as he tries to untie these problems himself. All the moves he makes are the wrong ones. He takes on drinking heavily with students eager to attend his seminar after discovering the class has been canceled. The journalist, once suave and commanding, is reduced to silence.
Andrzej Wajda
Rating: 6.8/10 (18 votes)
Plot analysis generated from content on Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Related entry on Wikidata (Q1364691), public domain (CC0).