La ballade du petit soldat

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!

... In other words, Ballad of the Little Soldier from Werner Herzog - in collaboration with photojournalist Denis Richie - is kind of impossible to give a real 'rating' to. This serves really as a document of human rights abuse - in large part with child soldiers (that is, at about the 25 minute mark) - than a typical documentary. If you've seen some of Herzog's other docs (think Fata Morgana or Herdsman of the Sun) there's none of the self conscious style one finds in his non fiction (no one looks in a stylized meditative pose at the camera). his recent Death Row docs if anything are much closer in showing the devastation of thev human spirit - point, talk, and shoot.

What you get in Little Soldier is: 'This is what's happening in Honduras, people are being killed by the Sandinistas, people are being herded up into refugee camps that will not last a month, families are torn asunder, and indigenous India children are being trained to kill in turn'. We're given a lot of narration here from Herzog, and it's necessary: this is like a Frontline piece that is trying to get in a lot of information in a short amount of time. I only wish this were longer as at 45 minute there's really only so much time, though I wonder if some of their access was limited (at one point they show the start of a battle, with adult troops off a river-boat, and as much danger Herzog could get I sensed there was only so much war documentarian in this case).

What stays with you while watching it and once it's over are the faces of these children, shown plainly, occasionally singing on camera - this may be the closest to something that isn't 'just happening' as it's going on, but here I took away that we see there is still humanity in these children, they can still sing songs and respond to joy - and then being trained to fire guns and missiles. The narration is blunt and to the point, and only near the end does Richie put his perspective on it all. It's horrific too to think how this is really the norm in many countries to this day; one thinks of those in African areas especially, or Boko Haram.

An adult soldier comments at one point the children were braver than the adults to fight against Communism... like they'd know better! Ballad of the Little Soldier may be one of the deadliest/ serious films the Bavarian director made, and it packs a gut punch for how it just looks on at this people ripped apart by the Sandinistas and the war machine that rose up in Central America in the 80's. There's fire here.

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.

Werner Herzog looks at the young soldiers who make up the Miskito Indian rebel army. The Indians are an abused minority who sided with the Sandinistas in the Nicaragua civil war. However once the Sandinistas won the Indians were once more an abuse minority and had to fight once more for their rights.

The first part of the film deals with the war itself and how the adults are handling it. The second part of the film deals with the 10,11 and 12 year olds who are being recruited into the fight because there simply not enough men to carry on the fight. This is a film that is rather eerie with its reflections to the suicide bombers that have become part of life in some parts of the world. The problem is not new, with Herzog's co director telling the story about fighting in Berlin in the final weeks of the Second World War as a member of the Hitler Youth.

The film is good but not great film with the film running much too long for what it is. While it does show us something most people were not aware of, its also rather static with much of the film made up by people in large groups sitting around looking into the camera while one person speaks. The result is a desire to reach for the remote ( a rare thing for any Herzog film). Worth a look if you stumble on it, but not something worth searching for. 6.5 out of 10

"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.