Alexander Nevsky

Sergei Eisenstein, Russia, 1938, bw (8.8*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon Film #22
In 1242, Russia in being invaded by two sides - the Mongols from Asia to the east; and by the Germans Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire from the west, the European side. Novgorod is the last free, unconquered city in Russia. The population, calls on the Prince Aleksander Nevsky for help in organizing the defense - he had defeated Swedish invaders in a previous battle.

His plan is to lure the Germans onto a giant frozen lake, which is one of the great battles in cinema, shot in beautiful black and white. [see photo below] This movie was made on the eve of a threatened invasion of Russia by Germany, just before the outbreak of WW2. The idea was to obviously make pro-Russian, nationalistic propaganda. Nonetheless, it is an overwhelming, marvelous, stunning powerful masterpiece.

If you can forget the ideology, which is that Russia will always use her winter to her advantage in repelling invaders, and watch it as art, you will witness perhaps Eisenstein's greatest work, and a black-and-white classic.

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The Italian

aka Italianetz
Andrei Kravchuk, Russia, 2005 (8.4*)
Based on a true story, you might call this a realistic, modern version of Oliver Twist. The story is about Russian orphans, and this centers on a six-year old boy named Vanya, realistically portrayed by Kolya Spiridonov. The title comes from his nickname, given after a visiting Italian couple decides to adopt him, and he then awaits the two months of bureaucratic paper shuffling. He becomes the envy of most of the others because few will be adopted, and almost none go to warm climates like the Mediterranean.

The orphans go out daily and make pocket change however they can, with some of the teenage girls prostituting themselves. At night, they pool their money in a common fund, and discuss their dreams of a better life. Some simply want to be adopted, but most would like to find their birth mothers. The adults here are mostly shown as alcoholics and mercenaries, though most truly wish a better life for all the kids.

This is a harsh reality, yet a story filled with optimism and simple pleasures, when an ice cream or chocolate candy can literally make someone's day. Spiridonov has done a remarkable job with both casting and directing non-professional actors. You probably will not find a more realistic look at modern orphans, and along with Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay, one of the best post-Dickensian orphan tales.

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Prisoner of the Mountains

Sergei Bodrov, 1996, Russian (8.9*)
This is a very touching and unusual anti-war story based on Leo Tolstoy's story Prisoner of the Caucasus. The story is updated to Russia's war with Islamic separatists in Chechnya, and begins with the ambush of a small Russian unit. Two soldiers are captured by guerillas, one a late teen named Vanya (Sergi Bodrov Jr.) who youth is accentuated by his attachment to his mother. Their captor is a man (Jemel Sikharulidze) who hopes to barter at least one in exchange for his son, arrested in town by the head of the local Russian army.

While held captive in a small, primitive yet beautiful stone village, Vanya develops a strong bond of friendship with his captor's young teenage daughter who oversees the captives, Dina (Susanna Mekhraliyeva), who thinks she will not be able to find a husband. At the same time, his mother works through the Russian army attempting to gain release for her son. Bodrov shows both sides of this story without bias, and allows the viewers to develop a rapport for all the characters and their predicaments. A foreign language film nominee for an Oscar and a Golden Globe, winner 5 "Nikas" (Russian film awards), including best picture and screenplay, and five other international awards.

Awards page at IMDB

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Come and See

Elim Klimov, 1985, Russia (8.4*)
This is one of the more harrowing WW2 films, as it takes place in rural Belorussia as the Nazis invade, turning idyllic, pastoral farmland into a living hell. We see life through the eyes of a teenage boy, named Florya, brilliantly played by Alexei Kravencho, who begins the film digging in the sand for discarded weapons, which he and his friends use for playing war. Soon after, the Nazi invasion comes, and he flees with some armed partisans into the woods. Gradually through the film, his face becomes etched by horror, and his his eyes mirror his internal shock at the atrocities he witnesses.

This has some of the more memorable war scenes in memory. Director Klimov has made the film more immediate and realistic by using high contrast, grainy film and hand-held cameras. You often feel the trees whipping past you as you hike through the forest with partisans to escape the invading army, which is leaving a path of destruction. There’s a particularly frightening one of machine gun fire in the dark on a moonlit night, tracers skimming by just over the head of a prone Florya in the grass.

A warning that this depicts war brutality at its worst, and is not a family film nor one for the squeamish, but for everyone else, a must-see war film that brings the ultimate reality of mankind’s atrocities back to our consciousness once again. One of the best Russian films, #559 on our top ranked films on the net survey.

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Ballad of a Soldier

Grigori Chukhrai, Russia, 1959 (9.1*)
This is a simply beautiful black and white Russian film. Among the first to be released in the U.S. after the Stalin reign of censorship ended, it’s a simple anti-war tale of a nineteen year old soldier, played by Vladimir Ivashov. Really nothing more than a travel or ‘road film’, the story concerns a pass he receives to visit home after destroying two German tanks in the film’s opening sequence. From then on, we are away from the war, witnessing a young hero’s journey home to see his mother, at times having to bribe train guards with cans of food, which was that scarce, even for soldiers. Shanna Prokharenko plays a gorgeous,m wholesome young Russian woman he meets on the train and travels with.

Somehow, Chukhrai avoids sentimentality, but tells a story with a lot of heart and optimism, while at the same time showing the fortitude with which the Russian people, mostly rural peasants, faces the massive Nazi invasion of their homeland, which created a 1500-mile war front, something we can’t imagine here – akin to two armies facing off along the entire length of the Mississippi River. There’s much beautiful cinematography and amateur faces as much of the film involves a train trip, so the viewer is taken along the same journey home to the prairie. Some call it propaganda; then watch some John Wayne or other U.S. war films, even worse with lots of yankee bravado; this is far more subtle and effective. One of the best Russian films , unfortunately no other films of Chukhrai's are available.

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The Cuckoo

Alexsandr Rogozhkin, 2002, Russia (9.0*)
One incredibly beautiful location, an alpine Finnish lake without a settlement in sight, makes this small, sparse anti-war film a rare treat. The story begins with a condemned Finnish soldier being chained to a rock as a sniper, and we follow his story in this locale, which appears to be a very rural area of Finland. The tale eventually involves another soldier, a Russian, and a local laplander woman, none of whom speak the same language.

Anni-Christina Juuoso is a delight as the widow they run into, self-sufficient pioneer who lives alone in the wilderness since her husband died. This simple plot device works very well to illustrate the futility of international hostilities, and that compassion and sharing are the true human virtues. One of the more austere, yet thought provoking films you will see, and the cinematography is breathtaking.

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Mongol

Sergei Bodrov, Russia, 2007 (8.9*)
Stunning cinematography and visual images make this biopic of the early life of a Mongol named Temudgin, who was later to become Genghis Khan, a must see for all cinema fans. The faces of the actors are all perfect, as we start with a nine-year old Temudgin on a trip with his father, who gets poisoned. The next couple of decades are not only a fight for survival, but also provide the future khan with enough solitude to be able to clearly conceive a plan for his life that he later put into action. When captured, a priest of the king says "let this man go, I see hordes of Mongols on horseback." The king put him in a cage with this on a sign in front, "the Mongol who would destroy my kingdom." This is one of the most compelling Russian films, the first part of a proposed trilogy on the life of Genghis Khan. An Oscar nominee for foreign language film, should have been a cinematography and directing nominee as well.

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Ivan's Childhood

Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia, 1962, bw (8.8*)
Russian cinema emerged after Stalin when both restrictions were relaxed and the state doubled the number of movies funded to over 100 per year by the early sixties. Andrei Tarkovsky, son of a poet, was one of the new directors to emerge, and directed some well known films, including Andrei Rublev, Solaris, and Ivan's Childhood, his first big film, actually a stalled project he took over, turning it into a personal statement of his own. Tarkovsky is poetic and lyrical, and mixes dream and fantasy imagery with harsh reality, in this case a bleak war-torn Russian landscape during World War Two. Ivan's reality is scouting the invading German troops for the Russians, often involving wading through swampy forests, and as he's driven by vengance, he knows no other purpose in his young life. We also see Ivan's dreams or perhaps pre-war memories, playing on a beach with other kids, running happily through the surf, riding in a truck full of apples.

This is a powerful anti-war statement, beautifully shot in a misty, expressionistic black and white (the cinematographer was Yusov), deservedly put Tarkovsky on the map. Rublev is also worth seeing, though too long at over three hours, but I found Solaris nearly unwatchable, simply a boring attempt at post-2001 science fiction.

Note: Tarkovsky gets a lot of attention and critical acclaim for his minimalist and abstract films, such as Solaris and The Sacrifice, yet this remains my favorite of his. Of the more experimental films, try The Mirror, it has for more to offer than the 'S' films, which I find less rewarding and slower than watching paint dry.

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Siberiade

Dir: Andrei Konchalovsky, 1979, Russia, 6 hrs. (7.5*)
This massive 6-hr production looks like it was made for Russian tv, a mini-series in 4 parts about 90 minutes each; since the film was also fullscreen, I'm assuming it was made for tv rather than the cinema - too bad I wish it had been widescreen, for the star and subject of this film is Siberia. In particular, a small village on the Volga River, and about three generations of its inhabitants, some of whom leave Siberia, some of whom return. This epic (in time if not in numbers of people) covers nearly a century of this area, from Czarist Russia until Soviet industrial expansion into the area in the 1980's, searching for oil.

This may be a bit slow and unsophisticated for some western audiences, moving like spring ice melting on the tundra, but there are beautiful scenes of a culture we'll never see: a wind-driven ice sled skating over the frozen river and disappearing into the winter whiteout (how did they ever find their way anywhere and back?, fur-covered Siberian peasants with the weather etched in their faces, audacious swamplands when thawed (called the "Devil's Mane" by the locals), as one Russian official puts in from an airplane "a useless area three times the size of France; we might as well dam it up for hydropower and create the world's largest man-made reservoir". This is truly a Soviet-style, industrial strength epic film, unlike anything from the west.

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War and Peace

Sergei Bondarchuk, 1968, Russia (8.5*)
Best Foreign Film (AA)
This won’t be for all tastes, as it runs over six hours, but as epics go, it is the "most epic" of all, featuring over 250,000 extras (the Red Army), and costing at the time, a record 100 million dollars. They actually made the definitive film of Leo Tolstoy’s novel, maybe a little Hollywood influenced, but still far better than any other attempt at this novel yet.

If you haven’t read the novel, this film should suffice, it’s actually a little long and tedious so this shortens the effort by a few dozen hours, and you won’t miss anything! It is, of course, based on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia intertwined with the personal stories of some Russian aristocrats.

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The Battleship Potemkin

Sergei Eisenstein, Russia, 1925, silent, bw (8.7*) Everyone who loves cinema should see at least one Potemkin film, this is his masterpiece. It tells the story of a battleship revolt that became a revolutionary movement in pre-Bolshevik czarist Russia. Terrific camerwork, epic recreation of a historical event, astounding movie-making for the time. Potemkin is also noted for actually caused more deaths filming the "storming of the Odessa steps" sequence than the real event in 1917!

One of our first World Film Awards, as we started with 15 silent films.

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