Csillagosok, katonák

Sure it's boring! Sure it's confusing! Sure it's stupid! ...But that's what war is all about, isn't it? Well...boring, that is if you have the chance to live long enough...

This film is a piece of art. See how the camera moves, floats, count the shots (about 300, compared to a 600-800 norm), Admire the long takes, try to guess who's going to live through the nonsense of this war...

Who didn't understand that the only thing that this film is promoting is peace and not war nor communism? And, excuse me, but...where did you see the propaganda exactly?

Some opinions reproaching this film with 'communist propaganda' strike me as creepily hilarious. Talk about blind determination and immutability in perception - ironically, the very thing that the movie is about after all. I would easily call 'propaganda' every other soviet or east-European war movie from the 1945-1985 period, if you like. Also, every other Hollywood movie that involves a battle scene and The Flag. But surely not this one. How many films show antagonistic parts performing the same tortuous movements of cruelty and murder, in what seems to be a state of mass hypnosis long beyond reason and ethical justification? This film must be one of the most unformulaic and most effective anti-war (i.e. anti-ideological) films ever, along with Elem Klimov's Come and See. The fact that both could be made in the Soviet Union is nothing short of transcendental.

Miklós Jancsó reduces war to its ignoble essence. Combatants swagger then cower. There are long periods when nothing very much happens, then a life is lost on a whim. Pettiness and officiousness abound. No transcendent causes, no rousing speeches, just ebb and tide, advantage then defeat. There are two sides, they fight. What more do you need to know?

The sweep of the camera is majestic, taking in panoramic vistas filled with struggle and slaughter. Thematically, this is the cinematic embodiment of the final lines from Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach:

And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night

Breathtaking in its conception and philosophical premise, this is an anti-war film that appeals directly to our current war-torn times. A masterpiece.

This is a great, great film. It's very unusual and not geared to all tastes. It follows differing groups of soldiers as they fight each other and take prisoners, or evade capture, or hide in villages. There is no plot. You simply follow one group of soldiers until something happens and you follow another group. You feel sympathy for the soldiers; until they commit a heinous act, and you hate them. It's really about the arbitrarious of war and how it reduces men to animals. Not for the faint of heart, it is nonetheless the best antiwar movie I've seen.

This is the greatest war movie I've ever seen. The two sides are nearly indistinguishable. The tide of advantage goes back and forth, back and forth throughout the movie. Fortunes changes without notice. And at the end, the only thing left to do is raise the sword, salute the cause, and charge straight into death. War is pointless and savage, from first to last. Beautiful filmmaking.