Wajda showed the viewer the qualities of Polish young people during the war. Simultaneously, critics connected with the authorities had doubts about whether the director would not glorify this generation, which would induce the audience's solidarity with the "reactionary" soldier. Zygmunt Kałużyński and Wiktor Woroszylski had the greatest complaints about Ashes and Diamonds. Kałużyński sought an anachronism in the portrait of Maciek's persona, considering its styling more appropriate for contemporary times than for 1945. In turn, according to Woroszylski, "the Home Army soldiers have been endowed with such a clear sense of the absurdity of their misdeeds that [...] it's hopeless." Marxist reviewers criticized Ashes and Diamonds, highlighting its alleged lack of educational functions and the marginalization of Szczuka, who was depicted in the film as a mediocre party activist. Stanisław Grochowiak, who found in Wajda's drama the "eschatological dimension" of the classical tragedy, rejected such propagandist interpretations. Critics looking for aesthetic issues in Wajda's work have interpreted it in a different way. Jerzy Kwiatkowski noted the high expression of adaptation in comparison with the original. Alicja Helman, in turn, put forward the opinion that "there is everything in this film–too much, too good, too beautiful", but at the same time it emphasizes "zeal, anxiety, takeover, great emotional passion". Ernest Bryll devoted a broader analysis to the evaluation of the antique structure of film work, with an inseparable fate showing the tragedy of the main character's actions. The role of Zbigniew Cybulski, as well as the musical arrangement and the cinematography of Jerzy Wójcik, were widely accepted. After the Revolutions of 1989, Ashes and Diamonds faced the accusations of falsifying history. Andrzej Werner accused the film of a historical lie, while film critic Waldemar Chołodowski criticized Wajda's work for suggesting that the representatives of the underground should be isolated from society. Krzysztof Kąkolewski deplored the fact that Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds for Polish and international audiences were for years a source of knowledge about the times after the Second World War. However, he also noted that the director–in contrast to the author of the original–toned down the propagandist message of the book, in which the underground soldiers were directly depicted as bandits. Conversely, Tadeusz Lubelski stated that Wajda's version warms the image of the underground to a much greater extent than the ones proposed by Axer and Bohdziewicz. Unlike Kąkolewski, Lubelski was convinced that the moment of the Polish October