Movie review: Triumph of the Heart

Let me begin with my personal mission statement for Christian art: you can’t just slap a Jesus label on mediocrity and call it great. Music, literature, theater, cinema, painting, sculpture, and architecture have to be genuinely beautiful and high-quality in their own right in order to communicate the divine. 

We recently saw the new Maximilian Kolbe film Triumph of the Heart and I’m thrilled to report that as a work of art, Triumph is indeed beautiful. 

I admit the title did not excite me, but I am generally suspicious of the word “heart” in art—it makes me wary of trite fluff. I was excited to see a rare feature film about a saint’s life because 1) who’s not exhausted on superhero remakes? and 2) so many saints’ lives are brimming with drama that seems naturally fit for the big screen. (Still waiting on that St Margaret of Scotland period piece mini-series, Netflix.) 

Triumph is not a Kolbe biopic. Instead, it centers on his final days in an Auschwitz starvation bunker with nine other men condemned in retaliation for another prisoner’s escape. Kolbe’s role has become rightly legendary; although not chosen as one of the original ten, he volunteered to take the place of a husband and father begging for his life. The Nazi guard allowed the swap. Kolbe would go on to shepherd the group through their shared final agony with prayer, grace, and even praise. (You can read my bio of Kolbe here and ideas for making pilgrimage and still-grimage with him here.)

My favorite elements in the film: the tender cinematography and thoughtful design. I’m sure as an independent film there was a limited budget for costumes and sets, but nothing felt cheap or rushed. I actually enjoyed watching a movie that wasn’t exploding with special effects to overcompensate for a lack of plot. The spare sets and close cameras created an intimacy that I think ultimately became the story’s fundamental theme (more about that later). The photography and use of light was truly gorgeous. 

Triumph takes place almost entirely on the bare stage of the concrete bunker, relying mostly upon dialogue to tell the story. Almost nothing is known about the other men or events inside the bunker except their hymns of praise that could be heard through the walls. According to the filmmakers, the other characters represented a cross-section of Auschwitz prisoners: Jewish fathers and rabbis; Polish resistance fighters; a gay man; Polish cultural leaders. Although the ensemble delivered believable pain, rage, and heartbreak, the script left some characters so underdeveloped that I didn’t really feel their eventual loss. 

It did capture some gruesome and brutal realities—gnawing at dead rats, drinking dirty and bloody mop water, sexual assault, execution-style gunshots—without sacrificing either potency or human dignity. In a culture where we’re conditioned to expect the most graphic and realistic violence, Triumph is more “show than tell.” I think that’s a prudent choice that makes the spiritual victory more indelible than the horrors (it’s still probably too emotionally intense for children). 

I deeply appreciated that the dialogue was presented with strong Polish and German accents, not the standard-issue British accent meant to signal “Europe.” But in many key moments the dialogue was so difficult to understand that I missed whole sentences. Would it have been better to use native languages with English subtitles? 

I also wondered how a viewer unfamiliar with Kolbe’s life would receive the story. I realized that my own existing knowledge was doing a lot of work. And my greatest critique: the epilogue told us what happened to the Nazi commandant, how Kolbe was canonized, and other facts. But it totally omitted the fate of Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man Kolbe saved. Gajowniczek survived the camp and the war and was reunited with his family. He’s the one who told the world of Kolbe’s heroic end, and was present at the beatification and canonization Masses. Gajowniczek’s survival is the fruit of Kolbe’s sacrifice and the source of the entire story—that seems like an essential piece.

I think the film succeeds in its primary message of love triumphing over suffering and depravity. Yet I found another message emerging even more powerfully: we are made for and satisfied only by intimacy. Our culture has come to equate intimacy with romance or sex, but authentic intimacy is the seeing into another that comes only with vulnerability. To see the power of such intimacy—a power greater than the darkness swallowing up lives and families and futures—depicted in a group of men is especially rare and necessary. Intimacy triumphs over the disorder and loneliness slashing across our society. I think this may be Triumph’s ultimate beauty. 

To see Triumph of the Heart, check the film website for local screenings or host one yourself.

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