Feeling vs unfeeling

Rating: Null/10 (19 December 2008)

The film follows the mounting mental anguish of a fresh boy soldier in the face of the atrocities of war  his face steadily more haggard as horror piles upon horror. There is a mix of familiar Tarkovsky elements: the child's embroilment in war; the forest as a kind of Eden, the cabin home of childhood, burning buildings. The best parts come early on during some beautiful lyrical moments in the forest  showering in a rainbow, the dance on the box, and inside the cosy little fir-branch shelter which goes down among my favourite movie scenes of all time  the stork looking in was inspired. And his voice goes hoarse after the bombing  how intelligent - only the Russians could have done that.
The largely ambient soundtrack in the second half of the film (to reflect the boy's temporary deafness) coloured the madness of it all by means of sound  a brilliant concept done to astonishing effect. And yet... I wasn't completely convinced by it all. It was over-dramatised in places (the burnt man's speech, for example, and the boy's face was contorted with insanity a bit too often)  a more restrained approach might have been more effective. And I was sorry when the ditsy Glasha disappeared because she really had something. The relentless depiction of the German army as a travelling circus of drunks, whores and eccentrics was superficial and smelt of propaganda... another superb film marred by the Soviets. Let's not suppose the Nazis were the only ones to have burnt villages. The Russians themselves had been committing pogroms like this for decades, and had done the same to non-Jews in their civil war (remember Dr Zhivago?).
The reverse-montage at the end also didn't work for me. There were deeper questions to be asked here, not simply about Hitler's childhood, but about humanity in general. The veneer of civilised behaviour is only skin deep. These events were not in the distant past but within living memory. Don't suppose for a moment that it was the fault of one man, that it can't happen again, that it is not happening somewhere in the world right now - that barbarity is not somewhere deep inside all of us.
The killing of the cow? Well, it's silly to want your sensibilities spared in a film like this. Thankfully, it wasn't gratuitous.