Helmikuun manifesti

Historical background briefly: Finland was a province of Russia until 1917. Although the declaration of independence was given in December 1917, the process started much earlier. One breakpoint was the "February manifest" set by Nikolai II, the czar of Russia in 1899. With the manifest, the czar tried to take away most of the privileges Finland had had under the Russian command; the official language was to be Russian etc. This started a wave of protest, including the murder of general-governor Bobrikov, the representative of the czar in Finland, in 1904. Finally it was Vladimir Lenin who allowed Finland to become independent, but unfortunately this started a civil war, as the socialists wanted a more fundamental change in the society, but could not take over the northern parts of the country.

The movie itself covers a time period of over 100 year, trying to describe the whole process from the common people's point of view. It shows us few real incidents combined together by the main characters lives. All the people are very patriotic... to the extent of fanaticism.

Unfortunately the movie is pure propaganda, and from a more modern perspective, very bad propaganda. It really hurts seeing relatively skilled actors behaving like a bunch of brainwashed idiots. The national romantic era was long over in literature, but in this case, it doesn't seem to be over in the movies. National anthem and the most famous marches playing most of the time. The kid keeping a piece of paper, mentioning the independence day, on his heart. And altogether the over-dramatic way the people speak out loud their decisions to sacrifice everything for the fatherland... it would make me feel physically sick, if it wasn't over sixty years ago when this movie was made. Maybe the most annoying thing is the completely biased image given of the civil war. On the other hand, this is the perspective of the upper class.

Good actors can't save a piece of trash. Of course, the movie is interesting from the historical point of view, because less than a year after the release of the film, Soviet Union attacked Finland. Therefore it is interesting to see how the people of those days saw the relationship between Finns and Russians. On the other hand, it is easy to laugh to old propaganda films as well as to old science fiction. But I still grade movies as pieces of art, and this movie is very bad even in the context of propaganda.

Historically it's an interesting movie, and the cast is top class of the era. However the movie was filmed during very bad relationship with Soviet Union and released when Winter War was being fought. Hence it was trying to rally patriotic feelings.

B-rapunSaario had some mistakes in his review to this movie. Finland was not a province of Russia, but an autonomic grand duchy of the Czar 1809-1917 that enjoyed many privileges. Also, Lenin didn't give Finland independence: independence was declared by the parliament of Finland. After that foreign countries were asked for recognition. Neighboring countries were careful and suggested Finns should first feel recognition from Russia. The descendant of the imperial Russia, the Russian White Movement, was however hostile to the independence declaration, so instead Finns feeled the recognition from the rebellious bolshevik government, who recognized the independence. There was really nothing they could do against Finnish independence anyway: their hands were tied with the internal conflict. The Russian bolshevik government already had tried to back up Finnish reds in the Finnish Civil War, but failed. The bolshevik government was protected by Finnish Red Army men who had escaped into Russia, and the commander of Finnish White Army even considered an attack into St Petersburg against the bolshevik government, but the Finnish government didn't support him. The bolshevik government at the time was very vulnerable.