The Most Honest War Film

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2005)

Forget "Saving Private Ryan", this is the real-story of who fought and suffered the most during-WWII: ethnic-Slavs within the Soviet Union. Most Westerners have little-or-no idea about what the Russian-front was and what it means in the scope of human-history. Centered mostly around the experiences of a young Byelorussian-peasant, this is what war is. Klimov stated in interviews before his passing that a number of elements came from his own experiences, and that he left-out many horrors that were even-worse. Like Iraq, the invasion of the Soviet Union was passed-off as a "preemptive" strike to stop "Bolshevik-terrorists", when it was really about creating a German settler-state that had been wiped-clean of Slavs by the Einsatzgruppe. SS units often razed entire villages, leaving nobody alive. We see a bit of this early-on in the film when the young-Byelorussian returns to his village--to the sound of buzzing-flies. All of this was necessary to the National Socialist-hierarchy to pay-off reckless loans that were the backbone of the Nazi "economic-miracle". Taking territory, and exploiting it was the only way Hitler and the Nazis had to do this. There is a similar-dynamic to American-involvement in Iraq, right-now. Proportionally, we are doing the same-thing, for the same-reasons. Not all films are for entertainment, and Klimov wanted us to remember so there wouldn't be another "Operation Barbarossa".
Klimov shows us that depopulation, and genocide was the reality on-the-ground, and this created megadeaths on both-sides due to the chaos of death-on-death, a terrifying chain-reaction. An unspoken, "take-no-prisoners" policy became a reality on both-sides due to Nazi-brutality. As-many as 28 million Slavs were annihilated by Hitler's policy of "lebensraum"(living-space). It is saddening that a film like this stands-out--we should not be shielded-from the realities of war, we should see it all so we know what war really is. This film captures the strange-beauty of chaos, too. There are moments that are shockingly-beautiful, even in war, which should give us pause. It is true that Klimov had his extras under the fire of real-bullets, which is crucial, and stunning. This was actually done in the early Warners gangster films, like "Public Enemy Number One"! Nobody will ever know how truly-horrible it all was, and yet, it is hardly ever noted in the mainstream of Western culture. We should be ashamed of the Cold War for this, alone.
Director Klimov was a unique director in the Soviet system, a genuine maverick with a vision of history as fateful. This is what makes him one of the finest of Russian-filmmakers, because he strikes upon what is important to the Russian-experience; the "Slavic-condition", if I may be so bold. It says a lot that this was Klimov's final-film, and that he felt he had said all he needed to as a Russian-director. It is an amazing-testament, too, to what was actually possible under the Soviet system, it contradicts what we think we "know" about it. Are films not truncated, buried and suppressed in our system, economically? Definitely. Are/were we so very different? The human-condition is often a distressing one, and history should make us more-wary of violence of any-sort. Violence never solves a problem, it merely creates more of them. Boring-cynics will say this is not-possible, but there have been centuries of peace in human-history before. Watch this film, and ask yourself if you would like to be in-the-middle of a war.
1.21.06-PS: As the situation deteriorates in Iraq, and the President continues to spy-on Americans, we should be learning from a film like this--liberty is hard-won, and there is a price-to-pay. Can we avoid war? I think so, and it will be hard-work, but a way to honor the war-dead.