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user\nEven if Voskhozhdeniye was your favorite film it would only be possible to watch it, at most, every ten years. Its just too emotionally strenuous.Widely regarded as Shepitko's finest film, THE ASCENT is the story of partisans operating in the Byelorussian forest in the dead of winter in German occupied Soviet Union.
While assaulting the audience with the sheer physicality of the wartime experience, particularly the privations of cold and snow, the actual struggle for survival against both nature and the fascists, there is always a subtle, barely inferred sub-text of moral judgment and the question about whether a man can be moral or immoral in one context but otherwise in another.
A partisan group hiding in the woods is attacked by a German patrol and loses their food supplies. Two men, Rybak, who knows the area, and Sotnikov, a Jewish schoolteacher, are assigned the task of going to a small village for food. They find the village burnt to the ground with nothing edible and nothing more than charred timbers and foundations in which in one cubby hole there's a children's mirror hidden. The overwhelming feeling is that whoever brings the brutality of war to a land and a people become truly cursed. I thought of the war that the Americans and British brought to Iraq and about how bringing the horrors of war to people is the act of a degenerate nation.
The two move on to a nearby larger village where they obtain, under duress, a lamb from the collaborator headman. The German's arrive and the two partisans escape under fire. Sotnikov is hit in his foot and holds off the German's as Rybak gets away with the lamb. Sotnikov becomes so desperate that prepared not to be taken alive he removes his boot in order to put a bullet into his head. Just then Rybak returns and drags Sotnikov out of the line of fire.
Rybak drags Sotnikov through the forest, bloody meter by meter all done in one long take. Each meter is an agony and yet he still pulls him through deep snow, up ridges, across depressions, over black bush stumps which crack as they snap under the weight of the men. There are several similarities to the cinematic vocabulary of Tarkowsky here - the long takes documenting a process, the effect of using repetition, and the resulting emotional stress which builds the longer the shot goes on. In the background, unnoticed because of the action, there hangs a question- did Rybak commit an immoral act by going back for Sotnikov? Whether under the moral standards of Marxist-Leninism or merely the common imperative of the survival of the group, wasn't his duty to get the food back to his starving band and leave Sotnikov to cover his escape? To sacrifice one man in order for the group to survive? Which leads to the question - Can a man who is immoral under one philosophical system be expected to be moral under a different moral system? The partisans come as if another curse of war to a farm house containing a woman with three small children. She is embittered by the scourge of war and barely hanging on with her three children. They are barely rested when more Germans show up. They make their way to leave and are directed to the loft to hide.
Sotnikov's cough gives them away. When a German pops his head in to have a look and no one responds he threatens to fire across the loft and Rybak's nerves break and they are captured. Now who has the moral responsibility here? Sotnikov for coughing or Rybek for cracking? The two partisans and the mother are trussed up and taken to a nearby town passing ominously under a wrought iron arch at the entrance. They find the headman and a small girl already in custody. They are interrogated by a turncoat Byelorussian played by Tarkowsky favorite Anatoli Solonitsyn. Sotnikov keeps his head during interrogation and torture and only asks what the interrogator's prewar profession was? He doesn't answer but from his ease standing behind a desk the likely answer was 'schoolteacher'.
Rybak on the other hand begs for his life and even offers to join the police. The previously unnoticed character defect, making a 'wrong' moral decision, the ambiguity (sentimentality) of which disguised it from judgment, now becomes obvious, unsettling and very ugly.
The five sit in a dark cell. They are all scheduled to die the next day. From here the elements of a Christian parable become stronger. Genuine Rembrandt lighting and compositions are used as other Old Master poses of Christ are represented. He decides he can save everyone if he takes on the guilt for everyone. He must be kept alive until morning so he can save everyone. He asks the mother for forgiveness and the headman knowing what is taking place doesn't feel such despair at dying uselessly as he did before.
Morning comes. The Germans don't care if Sotnikov takes on all of the sins of his companions or not. They will all be hung. They trudge up a steeply inclined street which is a virtual Via Dolorosa. A bench is taken up to the site of execution which is the gateway to the town. Five ropes hang from it. The bench only stands three, so Sotnikov stands on a tree stump which Rybak kicks out from under him. They all are hung.
As Rybak descend the road with the Germans, someone in the crowd calls him a Judas, an unnecessary allusion, Shepitko's only misstep. Rybak imagines several times being shot in the back trying to escape, dying an honorable death and tries, unsuccessfully, to hang himself in the shithouse, but leaves with the Germans as the beaten dog he is. However if Rybak was morally right to go back and save Sotnikov's life, is he wrong to try to save his own life?
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