Sto dney do prikaza

...but a slow-paced nightmare for the rest of us. I can't say the film "tries" to be artistic...it really is. The director clearly has been influenced by the works of Pierre et Gilles (consider this was created in 1991...just before the actual fall of the Soviet Union). The entire film seems to meander between several artistic/iconic (no pun) moments; almost like "a day in the life of a soviet soldier" if it were a gay man watching/picking out the scenes. The writer and directer make a very weak attempt at satire of "the system", but it just all falls short, since there is no real "message" here, other than someone really likes looking at young boys in (and out of) uniform. Once again, A for artistic vision, but it doesn't work as a film.

only a poem. bitter, cold, honest image against reality, precise verdict about an institution. in same measure, an aesthetic delight. because it seems be at the border between dream and reality.because, behind eroticism or humiliations, it preserves the flavor of Paradjanov , Sokurov or Tarkovsky work, the fundamental lines from war films and the precise verdict about a political system. more than a film, it is a wake up. a strange story from East, aggressive and delicate, terrible and useful. the force of images does, in many scenes, the story only a pretext. and the feeling after the final credits remains long time as convincing warning/testimony in the memory of the viewer.

A companion film to Come and See and The Guard, 100 Days Before The Command offers a very different rhythm and style to the war training film. Where films like Full Meal Jacket and Jarhead present the behavioural disintegration of their subjects, this film offers a more subconscious vision of where the personality goes when fragmented by the rigours of a depersonalising military command. This is not a film for viewers after a coherent narrative or a dialogue-driven journey, but for those brave enough to surrender their militant devotion to narrative film boundaries and spoon-fed cinematic experiences there is plenty here to explore. If films such as Father and Son excited your urge to introspection, this film will be a worthwhile venture. If a slowly evolving, visually commanding exploration of the male psyche and body in the Russian military and the relationship between men in such circumstances isn't where you are at I would settle for something less challenging.

Oh my .... my Russian film kick has turned up a rarefied film. Its vaguely about a Russian boot camp. Lots of young soldiers looking at the camera, looking at each other. Marching by in uniform, by the dozens. Swimming. Mass sponge baths. Yes they give each other sponge baths.

This film makes me speechless. Can a movie possibly be this bad? And its quite artistically filmed, with lots of locales and a big cast. Nothing really happens during the movie, although there seems to be some subtle winking going on between the soldiers. But then there's other soldiers that keep exclaiming "Don't goggle me!".

The movie manages to be as slow as a snail, yet impossible to figure out whats going on.

the camera slowly dollies past each scene, which is generally a bunch of soldiers doing the same thing. They may be standing at attention.... they may be walking down the hallway, but you get to watch all 200 or so soldiers pass, every time. When they pan over the faces of the soldiers standing at attention, you get to see the motionless expression of, like all of them!

This is one of those enigmatic 'artistic' films beloved of intellectuals and elitists that will mystify everyone else due to the internalised nature of its narrative (if it can be called such) which makes its meaning virtually impenetrable. In fact trying to describe it is like trying to describe a colour to a blind man: each scene is its own little story that bears little or no relation to those that precede or follow it. People die, but we never learn why. People stare at each other without talking. There's a lot of nudity, and this being a film about soldiers, much of it is of a homoerotic nature. Oh, and there's lots of cameras – so they're probably quite meaningful, although I couldn't say why. In fact I think I might have been watching the out-takes.