Arsenal

I call this a near-masterpiece because of the basic purpose of it, which is propaganda. This film exists as agitprop, and while it contains phenomenal and ferocious imagery, ultimately the single-minded viewpoint hobbles it as art and undercuts its slight attempts at humanity. While it can be viewed as a Revolutionary piece, exhorting a 'proper' spirit of energy, knowing it was made by a Ukrainian in 1929 while the Stalinist regime was either plotting or bumbling their way to the Great Famine makes this film deeply questionable in a moral sense. The theme of a Ukrainian learning Revolutionary values in the Great War, then returning to destroy the 'corrupt' forces of 'old Ukraine' made me deeply uneasy. That said, the imagery and sequences in this (quite late) silent film are second to none. The toothless, laughing soldier is one of the most stunning single images ever committed to film; and the general pacing, with a deliberate, lingering sense of time, forces concentration on the set-pieces. Much of the film is brutal, inhuman, and cruel. This is both an accurate representation of the setting itself and of the type of violent us-vs.-them propaganda produced by the Soviets at the time. I find this film VERY unsettling from a moral standpoint, something I don't often find myself saying. But, again, the masterful and stunning imagery makes it well worth viewing more than once.

Don't be discouraged by this Soviet film's age or obscurity - it is one of the finest movies ever made, and it stands alongside Carl Theodore Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," as the most modernist film of the 1920's. This is a spectacular visual achievement, and its visionary conception of cinema is moderinism that we've still failed to catch up with. Unlike most recognized masterpieces of Soviet silent cinema (e.g. "The Battleship Potempkin," "Earth," "The End of St. Petersburg," etc.), however, "Arsenal" is a surprisingly approachable film, and its strangeness and abstraction are consistently fascinating. Originally intended as a propaganda film, "Arsenal" is the second component of director Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," and it details an episode in the Russian Civil War (~1918) in which the Kiev Arsenal workers aided the Bolshevik army against the ruling Central Rada. Dovzhenko's approach is somewhat similar to Sergei Eisentein, in that he relied heavily on montage, but his pace was less frenetic, and his Expressionism was more exaggerated. As detailed in the film's academic commentary, Dovzhenko was previously a political cartoonist, and you can see traces of this background in "Arsenal." The characters in this film are caricatures, sometimes grotesque and sometimes funny. Similarly, there is a strangeness and remoteness in "Arsenal," which makes the film's few intentionally lucid passages quite dreamlike. The DVD commentary is concise and informative, and a terrific primer for the first time viewing. If you have any interest in silent cinema, modernism, or film as art, "Arsenal" is a film you SHOULD NOT MISS. ---|--- Was this review helpful?

A group of Ukranian soldiers return from World War One to more fighting in the Communist Revolution.

This is an extraordinary, kinetic and moving piece of film making, full of metaphor and of great relevance for people throughout the world today. It isn't necessary to understand the complexities of the times to understand the rich emotional resonance. Particularly innovative is Dovzhenko's use of rhythm and inter-spliced scenes.

I was lucky enough to see a restored version of this at the Cambridge Film Festival 2003, with live musical accompaniment. Particularly memorable scenes are the undefeatable worker, the laughing gas, and the horse team rushing to take a fallen comrade to burial before returning to battle.

Arsenal seems to be a direct challenge to idea that films are intended to be digested in one sitting. Apparently even Sergei Eisenstein had a tough time making sense of the narrative of some of Dovzhenko's work. Arsenal's narrative only emerges if you concentrate on what you've seeing - comprehending and reassembling the puzzle of the images and movements that Dovzhenko has arranged to create causal and symbolic associations. Dovzhenko's camera is like the eye of God, taking in a half dozen settings, all of them connected though disparate in space and time. Dovzhenko also is perfectly comfortable inserting the fantastic (a talking horse or a faith in communism that deflects bullets) into his retelling of a historical event. I watched the film several times before the plot was clear to me.

I'd recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a whole different approach to story telling. There are many great images and some of the acting is very good (the way Semyon Svashenko glances with disgust at one of the Ukrainian nationalists and slowly reaches out to touch his ribbon, feeling it's lightness, is an example), but there is no easy way of getting past Dovzhenko's style. You have to want to figure out this film. Dovzhenko's narrative technique is as unique as Robert Altman or Tsai Ming-Liang.

Aleksandr Dovzhenko was not a bad director but I consistently find his films to be choppy, poorly-paced, and fairly uninteresting, making him one of my least favorite propaganda filmmakers. Of course, many would attack me for daring to dismiss Dovzhenko as merely a propaganda filmmaker, but all three of his films that I have had the chance to see have undoubtedly been propaganda, although "Arsenal" is perhaps less obviously propagandistic than "Earth" or "Aerograd" are.

"Arsenal" features several arresting sequences and an interesting narrative from a stylistic viewpoint, but beyond that it really is rather void of any substance (which wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't trying so hard to be a grand statement about how great communism is). There's also some awful, awful scenes where Dovzhenko seems to think a lot of emaciated-looking people staring into space makes for great drama.

The only ares of "Arsenal" worth any significant praise are the war scenes, which feature the famed and excellent 'laughing gas' sequence, and the scene with the horse team rushing to bury their comrade before going back to battle. Other than that, there's some captivating editing in the early stages, before it becomes laughable later on as Dovzhenko insists on editing every other scene the exact same way.

"Earth", despite being fairly sickening when you understand the aftermath of the actual events it was arguing in favor of, was a captivating and intriguing film. "Arsenal" is, much like "Aerograd", fairly worthless outside of using some interesting editing and forming a different sort of narrative from the norm, and even at a mere 70-odd minutes a real chore to sit through.

4/10