La ballade du soldat

This is one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made and a touching little human drama that has not lost any of its power after half a century. After fifteen years since I first saw it, it remains among my ten favourite movies of all time from any country. It is full of poetry and visual beauty; a humble masterpiece from a young director at that time, who encountered all sorts of problems and restrictions during the shooting. Nevertheless, his perseverance to bring this work to life and the touchingly realistic performances of the cast make of this movie not only one of the best films that ever came out of the Soviet Union but also a classic gem of world cinema.

Gregori Chukhrai makes a very powerful, and poignant protest against the horror and futility of war. There is no whining, no accusing, only a very real, and believable, look at the effect that it has on some very ordinary people. People that each of us can relate to. I have to classify this as my all time favorite war movie. If you have a choice, watch it with the Russian language, and subtitles. The warmth is missing in the overdubbed voices, in the dubbed version. Although my Russian is as limited as possible, the emotion that is portrayed by the vocalizations of the actors, is powerful. One is certain to fall in love with either Vladimir Ivashov, or Zhanna Prokhorenko. This is one of those rare films, that each time one watches it, one gleans more from it, and feels that much closer to the film, the director/writer, and to the actors.

Comedians used to poke fun at Soviet movies during the Cold War era. The claim was that every Soviet film could be characterized by a single standard plot line—"Boy meets tractor, Boy falls in love with tractor, Boy marries tractor". Now, I'm not sure how accurate the wags were since Soviet films were never shown here, nor ours there. But, given Soviet emphasis on collective farming, and their theory that art should follow politics, that sort of result wouldn't be surprising.

Nonetheless, Soviet-made or not, this 1959 humanist gem shines like a proverbial pearl in the night. Sure, the boy and girl are idealized, but were there ever two more charming performers; they even look alike. Moreover, it's that natural glow amidst the seediest surroundings that suggests what some might call a triumph of the human spirit. After years of slickly contrived Hollywood pairings, I was captivated by a warmth and chemistry seemingly so unforced and unrehearsed that I marvel at how it was done. In my book, it's one of the great compelling love stories of the big screen.

Just as importantly, the movie is anti-war, but subtly so. We do see some devastation and combat, but the real indictment lies elsewhere. It rests with all the potentials cut short by unrelenting demands of the war machine. The boy must return to his unit or risk being shot as a deserter. Thus he must abandon the injured soldier with whom he could have been friends; he must risk losing the love of his life because trains must run on wartime; he must leave his mother, without even time to fix the leaky roof. But most of all, war demands that he, like so many fine young men, must leave life with a personal potential that will go tragically unrealized. As one of Chukrai's effects brilliantly illustrates, war is indeed a world turned upside down.

Also, there are the stunning visuals. Those vast Russian steppes may be flat and boring. Nonetheless, the corresponding big sky makes a magnificent backdrop for heroic low-angle shots of those dwelling amidst the vastness. Then there's that long dusty road at film's end, leading off into a great unknown that Alyosha must now travel. In contrast are the teeming crowds at the railway station, looking nothing like Hollywood in their simple cloth dresses and shirts. And what concern with fancy hair-do's can the women have when their hair is bound down with knotted kerchiefs. All in all, it's a revealing look at what could be called the Russian peasantry of the time.

No, the movie clearly doesn't come from the ministry of propaganda. Still, there are concessions. Note how cooperative strangers become no matter how initially cranky they are. The army officers especially are portrayed as understanding and non-threatening. Nobody is depicted negatively, except maybe the disloyal wife. Not even the Nazi enemy responsible for 20 million Russian dead is mentioned, let alone, vilified. No, the real antagonist here is war itself; the point is not stated, but it is shown to an uncommonly moving degree. The dedication at film's end may be to the Russian soldier, but the subtext throughout aims at the universal, regardless of time, place, or nationality.

Thus 50 years later, the movie remains a timeless humanist classic. And with it, I think Chukrai deserves a place alongside the early masters of Soviet film, that is, before the Stalinist tyranny descended. Now, I have nothing against tractors. In fact, I wish Hollywood would feature more such life-affirming inventions than the exploding cars they so love and worship. Nonetheless, I guess I'm glad that here, there's not a single tractor in sight.

In World War Two, almost thirty million Russian soldiers and civilians were killed in the fight against fascism, a fact mainly ignored during the paranoia of the Cold War. In our attempt to demonize everything Russian, we also overlooked stories of individual heroism. In 1959, Russian director Grigory Chukhraj made a film attempting to describe "what happens when the world loses a single person" and it is a masterpiece. The beautiful and moving Ballad of a Soldier tells a personal story that illuminates how war can ravish both an individual and a country. The film is set in Russia in the midst of the war. Pvt. Alyosha Skvortsov (Vladimir Ivashov), a signaller, has earned a commendation by destroying two German tanks. Instead of accepting a medal, he requests to be granted a four-day leave to go home and visit his mother.

We learn early through the narration that this soldier did not survive the war so his journey home to visit his mother for one last time becomes all the more poignant. The film, however, is not about a destination but about a journey. The four-day trip encompasses a lifetime of experience. Before hiding out in a freight car, Alyosha encourages a soldier (Yevgeny Urbansky) who has lost his leg to go home to his wife. Along the way, he hitches a ride on a rain-soaked road with a woman deprived of sleep for 48 hours. He brings a present of soap to an unfaithful wife of another soldier but changes his mind and gives it to her father who longs for his son's return. He also meets Shura (Zhanna Prokhorenko), a radiant young woman who, like him, hides out in a freight car. Reluctant at first and fearful of Alyosha, the young couple experiences their first love in several sensitive scenes but it is to be short-lived.

Ballad of a Soldier, of course, aims to present Russian soldiers in the best possible light yet Chukhraj does not hesitate to show his characters as real human beings with flaws. A venal security guard is willing to grant the young soldier free passage in a freight car in exchange for cans of beef, and the wife of a soldier is unfaithful to her soldier husband, a sequence that landed the director in trouble with the Russian censors. In Alyosha, Chukhraj has created a good person: kind, loving, and noble but not larger than life, a soldier perhaps typical of millions of young men who gave their lives to protect their homeland. Their struggle and personal sacrifice has been immortalized in a great film.

Alyosha, a 19-year old private in the Soviet army, more or less by accident neutralizes three German tanks and is allowed to return home to see his mother and fix her roof on a six-day leave. On a train he meets another stow-away, the timid Shura, and falls in love. The movie depicts the people he meets on his way home through war-torn Russia.

This is an amazing film, a kind of shaggy-dog story and one you are not liable to forget. It is so extremely well-paced in a natural, flowing rhythm with a smooth, unassuming camera and lovely lighting. Be that all is it may, whatever the film's affinities with Pudovkin masterpieces such as 'Earth' and 'Deserter', 'Ballad of a Soldier' is all heart, empathy and sincerity, and it will clutch at your heart-strings.

The boy is not yet jaded in the grown-up fashion, and the people he meets stir him into immediate sympathy, Alyosha is simply one of the most likable characters you will encounter in a film, without being trite or cutesy. And the people he meets are hardly ever as sympathetic as he is, witness private Pavlov's girlfriend, whom Alyosha promised to bring the soap as a gift. When he gets there, she has a lover visiting her, and although Alyosha judges her, the film itself does not. Its description of budding young love is enchanting, but it has, finally, its own bitter irony.

Watch this whenever you get the chance. Do not let prejudice about what you think Soviet cinema is like detain you.