La balada del pequeño soldado

This is a powerful, 40 minute long documentary about child soldiers fighting for an Indian tribe known as the Miskitos against a communist enemy. In the first half there are interviews, which are quite painful to watch, with people in the tribe who've seen awful events such as their children being killed before their own eyes because of the enemy.

The second half manages to be equally upsetting, painful, and disturbing, as Werner Herzog documents the child soldiers, preparing to go to war. The fact that such young children are going through such difficulties is greatly upsetting, and this film manages to be VERY powerful. However, at only 40 minutes, it STILL seems to need some editing! With such a short runtime, it feels quite long!

Although there's some flaws, it is pretty great and pretty emotional. If you're into more disturbing documentaries, this is one you have to see!

Though focusing on a specific time, place, and people, Werner Herzog's narration and translation at various points accentuates (if in fewer words) how the subject matter examined here could just as easily apply elsewhere and otherwise. The story of the Miskito in the mid-1980s is one of a people living on their own, affecting and harming no one, but nevertheless being subjected to a larger entity that demands, takes, and enforces while conferring no tangible benefit by their presence or power. The precise politics of any party, good or ill, are beside the point, as these are events that have played out time and again around the world, even from those who have criticized the same practices in other countries. And that little factoid makes 'Ballad of the little soldier' even more haunting than it already was primed to be, for while a broad portrait is painted, as the very title suggests the ultimate inspiration and primary focus is on child soldiers. Whether employed as tools of oppression, or borne from utmost desperation, there are few crimes against humanity more abhorrent than the child soldier; one is swiftly made to reconsider the ethics of giving kids toy weapons, or the unbridled glorification of militaries. This is surely among the most dreary of all Herzog's films.

With all this said, 'Ballad of the little soldier' is just as expertly assembled as any of its brethren as the filmmaker illuminates the Miskito's lives at this juncture. The opening shot alone is distinctly haunting, shifting then to a series of interviews through an interpreter and otherwise footage highlighting the surrounding environs and the circumstances that have been thrust upon the indigenous people. A little more than half the runtime is more or less devoted to a panoramic view of how the Miskito had suffered under the Sandinistas, with many sobering personal anecdotes communicating the urgency. That urgency is only amplified in the last portion of the movie that spotlights the child soldiers during their training, and in their own words tells why they supposedly wish to fight. Cap all this off with a few choice words from Herzog's friend and collaborator, Denis Reichle, and the end result is a documentary that even the expectedly exquisite technical craft can't keep from being notably disconcerting.

Herzog's pictures whole-heartedly embrace examinations of the diversity and complexity of the human condition, whatever form it may take, and no few trend toward a more dour reflection thereof. What takeaway image could be more harsh than that obtained from glancing at humanity in one of the corners of the world in which people are doing horrific things to one another; in which tranquility and harmony is shattered; in which innocence is so completely lost that pre-teen children become the objects and tools of that violence? The film that follows from this third-party observation is discomforting on an almost visceral level, such that I find it hard to in any way repeat back some of what is conveyed herein. If there's one thing art has demonstrated over time, however, it's that evocation of such reaction is no mark against quality; for as grim as the content is, 'Ballad of the little soldier' is all the more remarkable for what it stirs in us. Between the access Herzog had to create this, to the method taken in fashioning the movie, and beyond, this is very well made and deserving, and perhaps even crucial as an exemplar of that dire message that we "don't look away" - only, viewer discretion is strongly advised.

Ballad of a Little Soldier (1984)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Werner Herzog documentary takes a look at the children soldiers caught up in the Miskito Indian battle in Nicaragua. The first part of the film takes a look at the adults doing their thing but it grows rather boring pretty quickly. The interviews by Herzog are honest and straight forward but nothing really picks up the drama actually going on with the kids.

Dark Glow of the Mountain, The (1984)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Interesting documentary from Werner Herzog follows world famous mountain climbers Reinhold Messner and Hans Kammerlander as they scale both of the Gasherbrum mountains, which are 8,000 meters each. The documentary really doesn't focus on the difficulty of the climb but instead the psychology of what it takes to be willing to do something as dangerous as this. Herzog asks some hard questions about their mental state and if they have a death wish and their answers are kind of unique.

No One Will Play With Me (1976)

*** (out of 4)

Werner Herzog directed short about a young boy who plays alone in his classroom because no on there wants to play with him. One day a girl goes back to his house to see his pet raven and then we learn why he is the way he is. This is a rather bleak and depressing little film and Herzog perfectly captures the mood of the "secret", which I won't reveal here.

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded." --W. Somerset Maugham.

Werner Herzog's 45 minute documentary succinctly captures the reality of this achingly honest quote from W. Somerset Maugham. One moment in particular hammers it home. From an eager distance, Herzog's camera watches as a hired instructor bellows quick commands and warnings to cherubic soldiers waiting in line to test out a mortar. We can see down the line as each face reveals itself from behind the comrade's head in front of them. We see, despite the violent circumstances and the impoverished economic situation of those soldiers, delighted white marbles smiles and we recognize in that moment the happy-go-lucky face of childhood. We know, from our own experiences of childhood, from within and from observation, that these children cannot possibly grasp the full extent of their presence, right there in that field, dressed in scroungy uniforms and preparing for the use of weapons, no less. They only know that, as soon as their turn comes, they will get to operate an explosive weapon and behold its trajectory and its landing without the added screaming and carnage of battle.

What eventually happens is devastating. In one of the many shots capturing pairs of mortar operators, an extremely young soldier, perhaps only 7 or 8, is fumbling with the shell as his comrade holds the cylinder upright. The shell refuses to slide with ease down the tunnel of the mortar and there's an uneasy few seconds where you're certain something is going to go wrong, particularly when the instructor only minutes earlier warned the young soldiers about the dangerously sensitive fuses on the mortar. Instead of facilitating the situation safely, the instructor gives the little boy an adult sized wallop on the shoulder. The shell eventually finds its way down the tunnel, shooting right back out with a soft pop and a cloud of smoke. Immediately afterward the instructor gives the hesitant child soldier yet another wallop before the child soldier and his comrade go to the line where the soldiers who already shot a mortar round wait for further instructions.

In the moment of preparing that shell, Herzog closes in on that child soldier's face. In the blink of an eye we see that child's face go from eager anticipation to one of absolute despondency. What's terrifying is that this despondency arises not out of the child's realization that he just participated in the testing of a deadly weapon, but out of a reprimand from an older soldier. In this moment we see just how attentive those little ears, how expectant those little eyes, and how heartbroken those little bodies are. They, like all children (despite rough exteriors in some), are little followers, wanting only to please their instructors (both military and family) and be good sons and brothers. Their leaders, the hired instructors who teach the boys to shoot, march and stomp, are would-be older brothers. The tragedy is that in reality they turn out to be nothing more than enforcers of code whose necessity is only explained in terms of vengeance. When Herzog asks a child soldier why he wants to kill other little boys, the child soldier responds with something to the effect of, "They killed my mother and my brother and now I want to kill." These boys can only understand (and then still so very poorly) war in terms of schoolyard conceptions of an eye-for-an-eye and being brave. They are vulnerable, and, in one instructor's words, "pure" and ready to accept training with an "uncorrupted" (here meaning "unquestioningly willing") constitution. We thought we knew what it meant for a soldier to be called "fodder" but we don't really know until we see Herzog's close ups of the child soldiers in formation with instructors standing by and basically advertising their worth as killing machines. And if this fails to disturb us, then Denis Reichle's (co-director) postulations on the situation will. From behind the formation he looks down on the backs of the heads of the child soldiers. Turning away from them and looking off to the distance, Reichle tells us that this experience is too much for him because when he was only 11 he was recruited to fight for the Nazi's in their last hold over Berlin. "A lot of us died," Reichle says, "and it's hard not to see these children as already dead." He is right to say this because, in so many ways, these children ARE already dead. Their youths have been robbed from them, much more prematurely than we in privileged societies know and understand. Their parents, their siblings, their friends have been robbed from them. Their sense of safety in their homeland has been robbed from them. And just like the village woman with a ransacked house that Herzog interviews, they have been robbed of damn near everything except their fragile, saddened lives.

Herzog conveys all of this so simply and without affectation. The result is a deeply disturbing and wholly necessary film that tells a classic story (the stealing of youth by war and other destructive adult activities) in a singularly devastating way. You won't be the same after seeing it.

For 'Ballad of the little soldier',Werner Herzog worked with Denis Reichle who fought against the Russian army.There is a brief description of him talking about what he experienced as a child soldier.The film gains its force through the portrayal of young children who have been employed as soldiers by Miskito Indians who fight against Sandinistas.During the course of talks with these child soldiers,it is revealed that many of them chose to take up arms in order to avenge their family members who were killed by Sandinistas.Watching small children learning to shoot guns,one is reminded of the role weapons play in killing even innocent souls who ought to go to school or play.It has been exactly three decades since documentary film 'Ballad of the little soldier' was made by Werner Herzog in 1984.It is hailed as one of the most important works of cinema about the use of children as soldiers.This film has not at all lost its relevance as there are still numerous wars being waged in different parts of the world where children are involved as little soldiers.