Les Nôtres

a Russian war film. or, only, a Russian film. impressive script, admirable acting. and profound role of landscapes images. a movie like a rope. nuances of duty and love, communism and life under occupation, about chance, fear, cruelty and sacrifice, about profound image of reality in a village and splendid eulogy to basic values. so, a film about wars. each detail, each side of violence, the construction of dialogs and the waters of faces are important because , more than a story it is a picture about sense of small gestures,moral force in dark times. as many others movies of genre from Russia, using a noble tradition, it is a Christian movie and, in same measure, reconquest of past events in a new and clear light.

There is no war like one fighting on your land. When everything you know or hold dear is in danger, the loved ones, your home, the graves of the dearly departed. " Our Own" is a hard, uncompromising look at the Second World War, without embellishments of ideology, just sharp, focused description of the horrors and people who either live them or create them, or sometimes both. In the early days, in the summer of 1941, three soldiers escape from Germans and hide in the near by village, the home of one of them. There is no glory nor propaganda in this tale, just blood, guts and tears. And fear, thick and smelly,that eats the soul and dirties everything it touches. And it touches one and all, without mercy. Great movie.

I would call this movie "anti-Zvezda". As "Zvezda" was the archetype of the brainless glorification of Russian patriotism, "Svoi" is a kind of archetypal self-indulging praise of the "slavic soul" (for lack of a better term).

The 3 main protagonists are absolute anti-heroes, motivated only by instincts and urges, cunning rather than intelligent, emotional rather than rational, calculating rather than friendly. I felt like the director was patting the audience on the head, saying "see, I show us at our worst, but we're still a great people". A strange case of reverse-patriotism ?

Don't get me wrong : I happen to like the Russian way of thinking myself (as far as a "foreigner" is supposedly able to grasp it :)), but here frankly I think the director went way over the top. The result is a heavily demagogic movie, wading in senseless chaos and human degradation with an all too obvious nihilistic pleasure.

"Svoi" reminded me of the very disappointing sequel "nezavisimaia zhizn'" ("an independent life") of the excellent "zamri, umri, voskresni" (freeze, die, resurrect) from director Vitali Kanevski. I mean to say, "svoi" could have been a very good movie with a bit more finesse and some sense of proportions.

Too bad, since the story in itself has a great potential, the director knows how to shoot powerful and beautiful scenes and the actors are really good. This made my disappointment only worse. But here again, I'm no Russian ;).

This is a WWII movie that deals more with the dilemma many people dealt with who lived in areas like Finland, the Baltics, Poland, the Ukraine, etc. Basically, they found themselves sandwiched between two totalitarian regimes. While some obviously saw the Nazis for what they were, to others, the Nazis where seen as liberators from Stalin's repressions. For instance, if your whole family had either been sent off to the gulags or starved to death due to Stalin's collectivization of agriculture, anybody who would free you from the people who perpetrated that sort of evil had to seem like saviors.

Best I could tell, the movie takes place either in present day Finland or the Karelia region of Russia. One of the characters in the movie is referred to as a Chekist. To those who may not be polished on their early soviet history, the Cheka was the predecessor of the NKVD. Actually by the 40's, the Cheka had already been incorporated into the NKVD. Anyway, this is an important fact to know to understand the relationship between two of the characters in the movie and why they distrust each other.

If you have seen the Finnish film Kukushka and liked it, you will likely also enjoy this film.

War is about a lot of things; mostly, though, it's about daily survival for those involved. That, essentially, is what this story is about and hence no different to other war stories.

Being set somewhere in the Soviet Union of 1941, though, makes it different for non-Russians: the landscape is new, seemingly limitless, gray skies, barely inhabited, bleak in parts, lush forests in others, almost like another planet; and all filmed with de-saturated color that just makes it look all the more forbidding. Hence, against such a savage and unforgiving landscape, the trifles of the hapless and disparate trio of soldiers who arrive unannounced at a remote village seem hardly worth bothering about.

The youngest of the three, however, knows more than the other two because this is his village, the place where he grew up and where his father is a local official who manages to tread the fine line between accommodating the demands of German occupation forces while also trying to help the three – particularly his son – to evade recapture. Needless to say, that's a dangerous game the old man plays and especially when he must also deal with the local police who are looking for the escaped soldiers.

Add to that mix, there is the young local woman whom the son wishes to wed; and, to add to the old man's worries, the tough leader of the threesome falls in love with the old man's much younger wife. Such gratitude, indeed! The third soldier is physically sick much of the time, and is cared for by the old man and his woman; so, the sick one spends much of his time, coughing, moaning and lying in bed – and yet, he plays the most crucial role in the whole story towards the end.

From one perspective, soldiers always want and need to survive; yet, from another, there is the basic human need to connect to another. It's that aspect which is explored and developed by the writer and director within a setting that is barely conducive to fighting, let alone staying alive. It's a tour de force in acting from actors I've not seen before.

Productions standards are high: from the opening, gritty and horrific battle scenes to the pictures of typical domestic rural life – if not tranquility – within the Russian ark. Having been hugely entertained by Kukushka (2002) and The Return (2003), there is no doubt that only Russians are needed to make excellent Russian movies. This one is equally worth seeing.

Not for children, of course, and highly recommended.