Visceral

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2006)

Have you ever had that dream where you're trying to run as hard as you can but don't seem to be moving very fast at all? One scene in this movie is that dream recreated amazingly! This is a Russian war movie about WWII, or rather, about a young boy eager to join the ranks in WWII but is immediately sent through about every torment personal and psychological imaginable.
A lot of it is very visceral, gut-wrenching fear and agony at the atrocities being shown, but at the same time it has this flowing neatness about it. This movie loves the land that's being destroyed around it, the trees and the birds and the sounds, and with long smooth tracking shots it seems to suck in the idea of beauty everywhere it goes... even if the camera is focusing on the charred remains of a still-living but barely comprehensible human being who was torched by the Nazi army.
It's also a very subjective based film, dealing almost entirely through the eyes of the young boy who is perfectly acted by a kid much younger than me! In order to increase the pov feel of this film, much time is spent having the characters or faces looking directly into the camera and talking to the audience, something that is effective in a lot of situations anyway but in this film basically traps the audience Clockwork Orange style into sitting and watching every minute of it.
--PolarisDiB