La commissaire

Don't be tricked by the rating. This movie is wildly, unforgivably underrated on IMDb. To speak of its beauties would take me volumes. Suffice it to say: find it, if you can (it may be still available in good video stores, on VHS) and be enthralled by one-of-a-kind movie. As opposed to overrated 8+ 9+ c... like American Beauty or the Korean Oldboy and other movies full of either vapid pomposity or of guts and gore and blood and nonsense, Komissar is an extraordinarily beautiful and fluent meditation on human nature, war, religion, childhood, good and evil. Miss it at your own peril.

10 out of 10

Throughout the movie, `Commissar', the innocence and naivety of the children allows them to be used as a medium through which many emotions can be conveyed. Sheltered from reality by their youth, the actions of children reflect their environment, unhindered as they are by experience, opinions, or understanding. The actions of a child are not filtered by taboos; the actions are pure and unadulterated regurgitations of the world around them.

The example that stands out the most in the film is that of the playful pogrom. The actions of the three children, taken against the fourth, are a horrible reflection of the world they live in. However, this is not the only such example. In fact, the same concept, used in the very next scene, shows a beautiful reflection of the strength and courage of a family caught in the maelstrom. As the bombs begin to fall, and the children all begin to wail within the cellar, it falls on Efim to hold everything together. He does this in an incredibly powerful scene, standing up in the middle of his family and beginning to dance. Instinctively the children stand up to join their father in an act they are obviously as familiar with as the pogrom, and are placated by mimicking the ritualistic, soothing moves of their father. Whether or not they understand the significance of the dance, just as they may or may not fully understand the pogrom, is irrelevant to them. All that is important is that it and their father are there to give them comfort.

Through the same general device, two very different ends are achieved. Many responses stressed the horrifically moving quality of the pogrom scene, but fail to mention the beauty and hope of a father dancing with his children, while the world rips itself apart around them.

The story and characters are a bit thin; a female leader in the Russian Revolutionary army in 1922 is disgraced when she is found to be pregnant, and goes to live with a Jewish family, loses her hard shell and becomes a mother.

But the black and white images are truly striking and impressive, especially the fantasy sequences. They give the story a much deeper power and resonance than it would otherwise have.

Especially impressive as a first film. this was suppressed by the Moscow authorities for 20 years for it's sympathetic view of Jews and their oppression in Russia, and the implication that the USSR was complicit in knowing about and not stopping the concentration camps of WW 2.

During the Russian Revolution, the Red army enters an isolated town and leaves behind a female revolutionary, Klavdia, who has become unexpectedly pregnant. Klavdia stays with a Jewish family to have her baby.

A remarkable film, but one which was left unfinished. The director, Aleksandr Askoldov, is only credited with one movie, and it as if he put a lifetime of ideas into this single film.

Adapted from Vasiliy Grossman's novel, "Komissar" (called "The Commissar" in English) was banned for twenty years in the Soviet Union; the censorship board considered it "pro-Zionist" due to its sympathetic portrayal of Jews. It portrays pregnant commissar Klavdia Vavilova (Nonna Mordyukova) staying with an impoverished Jewish family during the 1918-21 civil war. This is the sort of movie that shows the lives of forgotten people in the midst of world events; the father Yefim (Rolan Bykov) complains of how things have not really improved for the Jews since the revolution. I would say that that's something that historians should note.

As an FYI, the woman who is teaching the Russian cinema class here in Lewis & Clark College was at the premiere of "The Commissar" in Moscow in 1987.