I don't think that is it. She just puts two and two together
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nishnishnish — 14 years ago(September 21, 2011 05:55 PM)
combatreview's last comment was detailed and learned.
I'm british and have seen a lot of films. War, psycological horror included. I love history too. It's what we all are.
Well aware of how the victor writes the history.
I don't see this film as anti-german. It shows a period of history.
One could make the same kind of film about how the English, under Cromwell (to name but one period), raped and slaughtered the Irish. It wouldn't make the film anti-English, it would show that one particular aspect of history.
I'm well aware of how Stalin was unfortunately worse than Hitler, but as one of our allies, the fact he killed more people, including jews, is little remembered. "The Nazis are the worst people of history. It wasn't us! No one else could ever treat other human beings like that." There is bad in all men. The aim of society is to assuage that mentality. People born in the past, in what is now modern Germany, are no worse or better than any other humans. Same as people born in my home town just outside Manchester. We're all as good or as bad as each other. Conditions and situations prevail.
I felt this film was a reflection upon what happened at that time, in that place. To show the Soviet attrocities, in this film would not be accurate. They did not occur in that situation. Give it a year or two and in exactly the same place you'd see the Red Army committing the same crimes against the retreating Germans. And later when they entered Germany they took revenge against the German civilians. That's well documented too. However, this film is not about that. It's a film about a certain historical event. Fictional, but yet historical. -
combatreview — 16 years ago(February 03, 2010 12:33 PM)
But because the Germans in this movie are given such unique personalities, to me the movie is saying that the soldiers were not just robots following orders
you surely don't have a problem up to this point.
but that they were all crazy sub-humans who enjoyed making the poor innocent Soviets suffer by raping and burning them alive.
Thing is, while you've clearly explained yourself, I'm just not at all persuaded. Certainly this is what YOU see in the film. I never saw that when I watched it. Actually the personalities of the soldiers spoke, to me, of the fact that these were ordinary people NOT demons from the pit. One of them is crying when he obeys the order to open fire on civilians. How does that make him seem demonic?
My point is that this movie has a very biased point of view.
So? Why shouldn't it? Do you need a war movie to be objective journalism? Surely the only thing that needs to be objective journalism is something that claims to be objective journalism.
Indeed, find me a war film that isn't biased. And how does one depict hideous war-crimes without appearing to be biased? Isn't the very depiction of these things tantamount to bias since you cannot but have an extreme emotional response to them, and thus be pushed into a position on the matter?
But at the same time, at what point does this affect your political views? In this film? Never. Where is the pro-communism? Where, for that matter, is the anti-Nazism? Sure, we know Nazis when we see them - but what if we didn't? The only time an attack on Nazism as a political ideology takes place is in the scene where an SS officer ACCURATELY expounds his party's attitude toward communism/slavs. Even that is not there as a criticism of Nazism per se, but of human Evil.
The film was nearly called 'Kill Hitler', and it has been repeatedly stated that the title refers not just to Adolf Hitler the Chancellor of Germany but what Hitler represents - human malice and destruction. It argues, intensely, that we should kill Hitler wherever he is found - including within ourselves.
That could absolutely be construed as a critique of more than just Nazism. Note that the climax of the film has the boy attempting to glory in the deaths of the captured germans, burning them alive, but he is prevented from doing so - and then we see him shoot at the image of Adolf Hitler repeatedly as time reverses but he STOPS at the point where he sees Adolf Hitler as a child.
The film is clear in its imagery. It is saying - fight your enemy, but do not become your enemy.
This argument, coming from a Russian in 1985 that isn't an unambiguously pro-Stalin position. Quite the opposite.
Even Hollywood movies manage to get in a glimpse of the horrors done by American soldiers at times.
Pfah, yeah, but rarely and it's usually made broadly palatable for the audience by compromise - notice that in The Last Samurai much is made of the guilt of American soldiers for their crimes against the native peoples during the Indian Wars. One has to wonder why, if everybody was so against it, they ever managed to kill a single Indian civilian. You know?
I'm taking offense with not just how the movie is obviously biased, but with how some posters continually make hateful comments decrying how terrible the Germans were, while completely ignoring that this was not a one-sided war, and that attrocities were committed on all sides, so making such statements is only creating hatred.
Okay, thing is, your statement is ostensibly reasonable but your line of reasoning is taking you to unfortunate places.
For example - you are absolutely correct that this was not a one-sided war. But how on earth is that observation relevant? You can make it of practically any war. I would suggest that you are letting your own personal antipathy toward Stalin's Russia (and quite a sound and valid antipathy that is) interfere with your ability to view this film clearly. It is not pro-Stalin to be pro-Civilian when the Civilians are Soviet. It is not pro-Stalin to be anti-Nazi. I'm sure you do not watch American or British war films and have a problem with the fact that the crimes of both nations in that era are totally overlooked. Why would you?
Thing is, your issues with Stalinist Russia are entirely sensible - Churchill, you may remember, directly made a comparison between his alliance with Stalin and being allied with the Devil. What they are not is a valid basis for film-criticism.
Ultimately I'm afraid I have to say this - your comment that atrocities were committed on all side is quite alarming. It's absolutely correct, but I'm most used to hearing that phrase from Serbian nationalists who want to explain (accurately but with an overt agenda) that they were victims of war-crimes too in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Sure, it's true - but truth can be deployed for a variety of purposes, and it can also lead us to questionable places.
To give you an example. Kristalnacht was comm -
ursulahx — 13 years ago(March 07, 2013 06:24 AM)
If it's any comfort, the woman who has been gang-raped isn't Glasha, although Florya momentarily imagines it's her. The victim is actually the woman who jumped out of the barn window with her child, only to be dragged off by the hair and thrown into the back of the Germans' truck (where, presumably, the assault took place).
I would probably have found Glasha seeing the villagers' bodies the most disturbing bit, were it not for the fact that I'd already seen it in Mark Cousins' documentary 'The Story of Film'. So I knew that bit was coming.
But the 'which bit was most disturbing?' game is a bit pointless. The entire film is disturbing - that's the point. -
hotspurpagg — 13 years ago(September 13, 2012 09:39 PM)
Everything everyone has mentioned and also the first foreshadowing of the horrors to come when Flor accidentally steps on some eggs on the ground, and looks back to see bugs crawling on the stomped feathers.
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MoonPreacher — 11 years ago(September 05, 2014 04:44 PM)
Beside the barn burning and the nazi soldier trowing the baby, the partisan sticking the finger in the ass of the poor slow loris of the captured nazi commander. Pet animals are completely innocents of what human owners do, and I can figure it had a sad ending
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bd74 — 10 years ago(November 04, 2015 11:34 AM)
The entire church fire scene was horrifying, especially seeing all the different weapons that were used to kill or maim the civilians. I would think that with all the machine gun fire that was used by those Nazi soldiers, most of the people inside the church were already dead by the time the church was blowtorched. And all of the sounds during that scene, especially the bloodcurdling screams were just too much to take. I actually had difficulty sleeping the night I saw the film.
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elgallo76 — 10 years ago(November 17, 2015 12:25 PM)
It lasts only for a second, but to me the most disturbing scene is when Florya and Glasha run towards the swamp, she turns her head, sees a pile of dead bodies and then a death knell sounds. I thought that was creepy as hell.
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fsidhu — 9 years ago(August 22, 2016 07:15 AM)
The scene where Florya returns to his village and we see a quick glance of a pile of dead bodies. No scene in any movie has ever had such an impact on me. I had to pause the movie and just process what had happened for a minute.