Rouges et blancs

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.

War--chaotic, insane, inhumane, useless, and... calmly graceful? We of the Hollywood diet like our plates full with spastic editing, grippingly colorful images, and fast approach, but none moreso than with war movies, with Tom Hanks surrounded with shrapnel suddenly going surreal on us, or Martin Sheen slowly falling into mental chaos whether in the midst of battle or trapped in a room away from it. What we are not used to are long, slowly moving traffic shots as pretty much faceless groups of soldiers alternatively gain and lose ground, each performing their own atrocities and each making themselves no better than the others, but each the subject of a listless and uncaring camera that seems just as ready to focus on a blade of grass calmly waving in the wind as a troupe of men about to be slaughtered.

To add to this effect is the fact that half the time, the viewer hardly begins to establish his or herself with a character before the character is removed from the story. It definitely works to show the arbitrariness of war... it might not work so well with ingratiating the audience with the movie. With no characters to care for, well... sometimes it's hard to care so much.

But otherwise it's brilliant, magnificent, and... sort of epic, in a contained and concise way. What I want to know is how they pulled off the sound. The sound is always very spot on to the activities going on, but are so perfect, even in long shots, that it makes a complete mystery of where they possibly could have put the mic. Fascinating, in case the rest of the movie isn't.

--PolarisDiB

I was surprised to read that some people feel this film is communist propaganda. It is a very sparse, minimalist evocation of the senselessness of war. The characters treat one another not as humans but as machines. "Stand here." "Go there." I found it compelling and 10 years after seeing this film, I have not forgotten it. This is not soviet realism. This is a stylized account of the dehumanization of war. You cannot indulge in sentimental tears after seeing this. You can only shake your head at man's stupidity and inhumanity.

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.

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.