Reviews

This is not a film designed for Oscars but rather to make you uncomfortable, frustrate your expectations and confront you with real surprises that defy formula. It succeeds because both the writing and the acting are superlative. We are uncomfortable because we are not allowed unqualified identification with any of the protagonists, giving us just enough distance from them to keep focused on the issues which are revealed through the development of and conflicts between their characters. Nevertheless we feel we get to know them and even in some cases to get deeply inside them, increasing the power of a drama which turns on rather ordinary events. Our frustration and discomfort is increased because the story doesn't provide us with unambiguous answers to the moral questions it poses. None of the "action" feels artificially imposed on the material by a "plot", but on the contrary events unfold through the messy interaction of social structure, character and contingency, as it does in the real world, allowing us to feel surprised at every turn. In short, this is an extraordinary film for mature viewers of all ages, and not for an audience burdened with childlike dependence on having it's expectations fulfilled and all the answers provided by likable characters and a familiar, reassuring and entertaining focus-group-tested formula.

The work is absolutely stunning visually, at times radical in its framing. It is perfectly understandable that since the film was made only 5 years after Stalin's death the political strictures under which it was made forced the director to be careful to avoid depicting the persecution suffered by returning Soviet POW's under his rule, but by focusing on the suffering they, and most particularly the protagonist, experienced as prisoners in German work camps and the steadfast and heroic endurance they maintained in the face of cruelty and hardship he is completely successful in politically rehabilitating them as patriots, both for their contemporaries and for Soviet posterity. A beautiful and at times quite moving film. Highly recommended.