O Destino de um Homem

Sergei Bondarchuk directs the film and plays the lead himself. Thus he dominates the entire film from beginning to the end, and although he is a most qualified actor and director, you lack the smallest shade of polyphony. The story is by Mikhail Sholokhov, the main Soviet nationalist, and his tendencies to glorify Soviet Russia shines through especially in his treatment of the Germans, who are all abominable stereotypes - with the exception of one drunkard and the final general. There is not a shred of the slightest sense of humour in the film and almost no smiles even, except in the last moment when the boy comes in and and lets in some well needed and most comforting sunshine. Thus the dreadful story ends with the victory of humanity. It's a masterpiece, of course, but the whole film is a slow and depressing ordeal.

The work is absolutely stunning visually, at times radical in its framing. It is perfectly understandable that since the film was made only 5 years after Stalin's death the political strictures under which it was made forced the director to be careful to avoid depicting the persecution suffered by returning Soviet POW's under his rule, but by focusing on the suffering they, and most particularly the protagonist, experienced as prisoners in German work camps and the steadfast and heroic endurance they maintained in the face of cruelty and hardship he is completely successful in politically rehabilitating them as patriots, both for their contemporaries and for Soviet posterity. A beautiful and at times quite moving film. Highly recommended.

This first directorial effort from actor Bondarchuk (mainly known for his monumental War and Peace) shouldn't have starred the director. His ruddy countenance didn't convince me one bit he suffered through all the mishaps in his life during the Great War. Furthermore I found it very hard to believe the Germans went to so much effort to save the lives of these Untermenschen. There were good performances though and it is shot beautifully.

Watch instead Come and See (Idi i Smotri) for a shattering experience of the Great War.

Sergey Bondarchuk is probably best known for his epic spectacle "War and Peace" (1966), and his outstanding feature debut "The Destiny of Man" (1959) was made in the same tradition of the war genre, though not in a similarly big fashion. Like many other Soviet war films made during the cultural thaw in Eastern Europe caused by the spirit of Geneva such as "The Cranes Are Flying" (1957) and "Ballad of a Soldier" (1959), "The Destiny of Man" focuses on the human experience in the bleak misery of war. It tells the story of an ordinary man who lost everything during a war that meant nothing to him.

The historical legacy and the poignantly present memory of the Second World War played an integral role in almost all of the Soviet films made during the cultural thaw. It is as though life itself was approached from this perspective. An entire generation was left alone with their problems to sink into oblivion in the era of Stalin's cult of personality. Not until the new political waves of the 1950's arrived were these people dealt properly in cinema.

"The Destiny of Man" cuts right to the memory of WWII as it begins from the first spring after the war. A man recalls his experiences during the war and ponders why life has mistreated him so in a long flashback. Bondarchuk's mobile camera fluently shifts to the past -- the memory -- revealing its reality before our eyes. His style is very modern, as is the case with other films from this period, born from dynamic movement, montage and intensity of close-ups. Accompanied by an astonishing soundtrack with nearly surreal tones and a great score by Venyamin Basner, this poetic voyage to the days gone by touches our very core.

The film was made in the same year with Masaki Kobayashi's masterful trilogy "The Human Condition" (1959-1962) which also highlights the experience and moral disappointment of an individual in times of immeasurable brutality. "The Destiny of Man" also includes a sequence taking place in a POW camp where the prisoners are forced to work, thus inevitably triggering an association with the first part of Kobayashi's trilogy. A perceptive spectator (or an obsessive fan of Kobayashi) might even observe a shot bearing a striking resemblance to the iconic image of workers walking up the hill.

What makes "The Destiny of Man" to stand the test of time and lifts it up to the same level with "The Cranes Are Flying" and "Ballad of a Soldier" is its profoundness. It is not a profoundness achieved simply by story, but by form. This can be seen in the film's aesthetics which is tremendously rich of tone and meaning. Bondarchuk truly achieves to depict the complexity of human experience and historical conditions. The cinematic repertoire of the image, the scenes and even entire sequences extends from the brief vibrations of the dramatic surface to the aesthetic profoundness of human existence.

At first I thought this film would be the usual war film in total line with the politburo's view on The Great War. But after 15 minutes in the film, something changes. First we have a scene in which Sokolof (the main character played by director Bondarcuk)) comes home drunk - something I have never seen in an older Soviet movie, than the war breaks out and after a slightly over the top scene in which Sokolof says goodbye to his family all hell breaks loose. The scene where Sokolof drives his car filled with ammunition across the frontline is incredible, and this is only the beginning of the war. Although the story sometimes is quit melodramatic, the photography of the film is exceptional modern for a film made in 1959. In beautiful black and white the viewer witnesses the whole damn thing called war. The film is not as heartbreaking and in-your-face as Come And See by Klimov, but Klimov must have seen this film and used it as an inspiration. Russia lost 20 million people during the second world war (some because of Stalin) but what it meant for and how it changed the life of ordinary people is all to clear in this story. This man's fate as he calls it. Although the film, I suppose, is rare, see it if you ever have a chance.