La balada del soldado

"Ballada o soldate" has one of the most poignant sequences of all war movies:when the mother holds only for a few minutes, her dear boy in her arms,it's impossible to hold back your tears .I saw the movie for the first time thirty years ago and I have never forgotten it.Far from politics ,"ballada o soldate" is an universal poem,enhanced by a magnificent grandiose score,which enhances the simple beauty of the pictures,climaxing on a symphony for the finale.

Aliocha's furlough is so short (48 hours) and it's such a long way to his dear home.His journey becomes an odyssey ,but ,unlike Ulysses,his happiness will be short-lived.He and the girl form one of the most touching,lovable and innocent couple you will see on a screen.Their simple joys ,particularly when they share the soldier's food,or when they meet again in the desert station,are the ones which make a life worthwhile,even in the hell which surrounds them.

Sometimes recalling Sirk's " a time to love and a time to die"(1958)from Erich Maria Remarque ,the great German pacifist writer,with which it shares the same disgust of war ("I wanted to film a subject which could condemn war",the director said),"ballada o soldato" is one of these rare movies that will reward you each time you watch it.

Gregori Chukhrai makes a very powerful, and poignant protest against the horror and futility of war. There is no whining, no accusing, only a very real, and believable, look at the effect that it has on some very ordinary people. People that each of us can relate to. I have to classify this as my all time favorite war movie. If you have a choice, watch it with the Russian language, and subtitles. The warmth is missing in the overdubbed voices, in the dubbed version. Although my Russian is as limited as possible, the emotion that is portrayed by the vocalizations of the actors, is powerful. One is certain to fall in love with either Vladimir Ivashov, or Zhanna Prokhorenko. This is one of those rare films, that each time one watches it, one gleans more from it, and feels that much closer to the film, the director/writer, and to the actors.

In World War Two, almost thirty million Russian soldiers and civilians were killed in the fight against fascism, a fact mainly ignored during the paranoia of the Cold War. In our attempt to demonize everything Russian, we also overlooked stories of individual heroism. In 1959, Russian director Grigory Chukhraj made a film attempting to describe "what happens when the world loses a single person" and it is a masterpiece. The beautiful and moving Ballad of a Soldier tells a personal story that illuminates how war can ravish both an individual and a country. The film is set in Russia in the midst of the war. Pvt. Alyosha Skvortsov (Vladimir Ivashov), a signaller, has earned a commendation by destroying two German tanks. Instead of accepting a medal, he requests to be granted a four-day leave to go home and visit his mother.

We learn early through the narration that this soldier did not survive the war so his journey home to visit his mother for one last time becomes all the more poignant. The film, however, is not about a destination but about a journey. The four-day trip encompasses a lifetime of experience. Before hiding out in a freight car, Alyosha encourages a soldier (Yevgeny Urbansky) who has lost his leg to go home to his wife. Along the way, he hitches a ride on a rain-soaked road with a woman deprived of sleep for 48 hours. He brings a present of soap to an unfaithful wife of another soldier but changes his mind and gives it to her father who longs for his son's return. He also meets Shura (Zhanna Prokhorenko), a radiant young woman who, like him, hides out in a freight car. Reluctant at first and fearful of Alyosha, the young couple experiences their first love in several sensitive scenes but it is to be short-lived.

Ballad of a Soldier, of course, aims to present Russian soldiers in the best possible light yet Chukhraj does not hesitate to show his characters as real human beings with flaws. A venal security guard is willing to grant the young soldier free passage in a freight car in exchange for cans of beef, and the wife of a soldier is unfaithful to her soldier husband, a sequence that landed the director in trouble with the Russian censors. In Alyosha, Chukhraj has created a good person: kind, loving, and noble but not larger than life, a soldier perhaps typical of millions of young men who gave their lives to protect their homeland. Their struggle and personal sacrifice has been immortalized in a great film.

Many Americans suffered enormously on account of WWII. My own grandmother, who not only survived the Great Depression but also World War I while it was being fought right in her own Polish town, once said that the most difficult event in her life was sending two of her sons off to battle in the faraway Pacific theater. One of them ended up in heavy combat on Okinawa, and the other one served as a bombardier.

As hard as World War II was for so many Americans, including my grandmother and my uncles, I believe that it was even more difficult for the Russians as a people. The terror of war came to their very doorsteps, civilians and warriors alike, and it was inescapable for them. Regardless of any specific political situation or attempt at propaganda by either side, I think that this historical fact must be objectively recognized and respected.

A "ballad" is a form of poetry, and, for me, "Ballad of a Soldier" is where poetry meets the camera. At the very beginning, the mother of the young, hero soldier who is the central character of the film looks out at the one unpaved road that leads in and out of her village. Somewhere at the end of the road, where ever that may be, is her beloved son. Overhead is an unforgiving sky, representing a sense of the power that controls all.

On the battlefield, we are terrified by a tank that is determined to chase our hero soldier through the countryside until he somehow manages to secure a position in order to destroy it and one other. Recognized by his superiors for his heroism, instead of a medal he requests a furlough pass to say farewell properly to his mother and to fix her leaking roof. It is granted for only a few days. Under the time pressure, the viewer witnesses his long, harrowing journey home from the front, experiencing the chaos, displacement, and hardship of the war on civilians and soldiers alike. In the mayhem and the confusion, he also manages to find true love at a most unexpected time and place.

I am sorry that this film was unavailable to me as a ten year old child in 1959 when it was produced. Aside from the political climate that prevailed at the time, which was mostly filled with fear, perhaps I would have been old enough to judge that Russian people were of the same flesh and blood that I was and that their lives, not only as Russians but as human beings, were affected very seriously by the horrors of war. While it would have been a very important lesson for me at the time, it did not come too late for me 57 long years later. This is a beautiful movie. See it!

This is one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made and a touching little human drama that has not lost any of its power after half a century. After fifteen years since I first saw it, it remains among my ten favourite movies of all time from any country. It is full of poetry and visual beauty; a humble masterpiece from a young director at that time, who encountered all sorts of problems and restrictions during the shooting. Nevertheless, his perseverance to bring this work to life and the touchingly realistic performances of the cast make of this movie not only one of the best films that ever came out of the Soviet Union but also a classic gem of world cinema.