La ballade du petit soldat

... In other words, Ballad of the Little Soldier from Werner Herzog - in collaboration with photojournalist Denis Richie - is kind of impossible to give a real 'rating' to. This serves really as a document of human rights abuse - in large part with child soldiers (that is, at about the 25 minute mark) - than a typical documentary. If you've seen some of Herzog's other docs (think Fata Morgana or Herdsman of the Sun) there's none of the self conscious style one finds in his non fiction (no one looks in a stylized meditative pose at the camera). his recent Death Row docs if anything are much closer in showing the devastation of thev human spirit - point, talk, and shoot.

What you get in Little Soldier is: 'This is what's happening in Honduras, people are being killed by the Sandinistas, people are being herded up into refugee camps that will not last a month, families are torn asunder, and indigenous India children are being trained to kill in turn'. We're given a lot of narration here from Herzog, and it's necessary: this is like a Frontline piece that is trying to get in a lot of information in a short amount of time. I only wish this were longer as at 45 minute there's really only so much time, though I wonder if some of their access was limited (at one point they show the start of a battle, with adult troops off a river-boat, and as much danger Herzog could get I sensed there was only so much war documentarian in this case).

What stays with you while watching it and once it's over are the faces of these children, shown plainly, occasionally singing on camera - this may be the closest to something that isn't 'just happening' as it's going on, but here I took away that we see there is still humanity in these children, they can still sing songs and respond to joy - and then being trained to fire guns and missiles. The narration is blunt and to the point, and only near the end does Richie put his perspective on it all. It's horrific too to think how this is really the norm in many countries to this day; one thinks of those in African areas especially, or Boko Haram.

An adult soldier comments at one point the children were braver than the adults to fight against Communism... like they'd know better! Ballad of the Little Soldier may be one of the deadliest/ serious films the Bavarian director made, and it packs a gut punch for how it just looks on at this people ripped apart by the Sandinistas and the war machine that rose up in Central America in the 80's. There's fire here.

Werner Herzog looks at the young soldiers who make up the Miskito Indian rebel army. The Indians are an abused minority who sided with the Sandinistas in the Nicaragua civil war. However once the Sandinistas won the Indians were once more an abuse minority and had to fight once more for their rights.

The first part of the film deals with the war itself and how the adults are handling it. The second part of the film deals with the 10,11 and 12 year olds who are being recruited into the fight because there simply not enough men to carry on the fight. This is a film that is rather eerie with its reflections to the suicide bombers that have become part of life in some parts of the world. The problem is not new, with Herzog's co director telling the story about fighting in Berlin in the final weeks of the Second World War as a member of the Hitler Youth.

The film is good but not great film with the film running much too long for what it is. While it does show us something most people were not aware of, its also rather static with much of the film made up by people in large groups sitting around looking into the camera while one person speaks. The result is a desire to reach for the remote ( a rare thing for any Herzog film). Worth a look if you stumble on it, but not something worth searching for. 6.5 out of 10

German film-maker Werner Herzog is well-known for his obsession with, well, obsession, finding joy and producing some great documentaries over the years championing the quirkiness of the human spirit. With Ballad of the Little Soldier, the focus is not on the idiosyncratic but on the child soldiers serving in Nicaragua fighting for the native Miskito Indians against the oppressive Sandinistas. Although he may deny it, this is Herzog's most political film to date. With co-director Denis Reichle, who served the Nazi's in the Volkssturm, Herzog's interviews various Miskito inhabitants who have fallen victim of the brutal Sandinistan regime.

At only 45 minutes long, Herzog and Reichle manage to paint a large picture of what life was like for the Miskito's. A woman wails about her family, butchered at the hands of the Socialist Sandinistas, whose government initiative to move the Miskito's into civilised society has led to their villages being sacked and torched, and the mass murder of men, women and children. The persistent nature of Herzog and Reichle's interview techniques do often make things uncomfortable, but it certainly makes for devastating viewing.

Narratively, the film is all over the place. The cinema verite style contradicts the film's title, shifting focus away from the children far too often in favour of the adult soldiers, who march past the camera with similar resigned, weathered expressions. But this is still powerful stuff, with Herzog's narration lending the film a dream-like quality amidst the seriousness of the subject matter, and Reichle's recollection of his time in the Volksstrum as a child making for difficult viewing, especially told in the context of the events that were unfolding in Nicaragua. Although this is far from Herzog's best documentary, he manages to achieve more in 45 minutes than most documentarians could only dream of.

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Though focusing on a specific time, place, and people, Werner Herzog's narration and translation at various points accentuates (if in fewer words) how the subject matter examined here could just as easily apply elsewhere and otherwise. The story of the Miskito in the mid-1980s is one of a people living on their own, affecting and harming no one, but nevertheless being subjected to a larger entity that demands, takes, and enforces while conferring no tangible benefit by their presence or power. The precise politics of any party, good or ill, are beside the point, as these are events that have played out time and again around the world, even from those who have criticized the same practices in other countries. And that little factoid makes 'Ballad of the little soldier' even more haunting than it already was primed to be, for while a broad portrait is painted, as the very title suggests the ultimate inspiration and primary focus is on child soldiers. Whether employed as tools of oppression, or borne from utmost desperation, there are few crimes against humanity more abhorrent than the child soldier; one is swiftly made to reconsider the ethics of giving kids toy weapons, or the unbridled glorification of militaries. This is surely among the most dreary of all Herzog's films.

With all this said, 'Ballad of the little soldier' is just as expertly assembled as any of its brethren as the filmmaker illuminates the Miskito's lives at this juncture. The opening shot alone is distinctly haunting, shifting then to a series of interviews through an interpreter and otherwise footage highlighting the surrounding environs and the circumstances that have been thrust upon the indigenous people. A little more than half the runtime is more or less devoted to a panoramic view of how the Miskito had suffered under the Sandinistas, with many sobering personal anecdotes communicating the urgency. That urgency is only amplified in the last portion of the movie that spotlights the child soldiers during their training, and in their own words tells why they supposedly wish to fight. Cap all this off with a few choice words from Herzog's friend and collaborator, Denis Reichle, and the end result is a documentary that even the expectedly exquisite technical craft can't keep from being notably disconcerting.

Herzog's pictures whole-heartedly embrace examinations of the diversity and complexity of the human condition, whatever form it may take, and no few trend toward a more dour reflection thereof. What takeaway image could be more harsh than that obtained from glancing at humanity in one of the corners of the world in which people are doing horrific things to one another; in which tranquility and harmony is shattered; in which innocence is so completely lost that pre-teen children become the objects and tools of that violence? The film that follows from this third-party observation is discomforting on an almost visceral level, such that I find it hard to in any way repeat back some of what is conveyed herein. If there's one thing art has demonstrated over time, however, it's that evocation of such reaction is no mark against quality; for as grim as the content is, 'Ballad of the little soldier' is all the more remarkable for what it stirs in us. Between the access Herzog had to create this, to the method taken in fashioning the movie, and beyond, this is very well made and deserving, and perhaps even crucial as an exemplar of that dire message that we "don't look away" - only, viewer discretion is strongly advised.

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded." --W. Somerset Maugham.

Werner Herzog's 45 minute documentary succinctly captures the reality of this achingly honest quote from W. Somerset Maugham. One moment in particular hammers it home. From an eager distance, Herzog's camera watches as a hired instructor bellows quick commands and warnings to cherubic soldiers waiting in line to test out a mortar. We can see down the line as each face reveals itself from behind the comrade's head in front of them. We see, despite the violent circumstances and the impoverished economic situation of those soldiers, delighted white marbles smiles and we recognize in that moment the happy-go-lucky face of childhood. We know, from our own experiences of childhood, from within and from observation, that these children cannot possibly grasp the full extent of their presence, right there in that field, dressed in scroungy uniforms and preparing for the use of weapons, no less. They only know that, as soon as their turn comes, they will get to operate an explosive weapon and behold its trajectory and its landing without the added screaming and carnage of battle.

What eventually happens is devastating. In one of the many shots capturing pairs of mortar operators, an extremely young soldier, perhaps only 7 or 8, is fumbling with the shell as his comrade holds the cylinder upright. The shell refuses to slide with ease down the tunnel of the mortar and there's an uneasy few seconds where you're certain something is going to go wrong, particularly when the instructor only minutes earlier warned the young soldiers about the dangerously sensitive fuses on the mortar. Instead of facilitating the situation safely, the instructor gives the little boy an adult sized wallop on the shoulder. The shell eventually finds its way down the tunnel, shooting right back out with a soft pop and a cloud of smoke. Immediately afterward the instructor gives the hesitant child soldier yet another wallop before the child soldier and his comrade go to the line where the soldiers who already shot a mortar round wait for further instructions.

In the moment of preparing that shell, Herzog closes in on that child soldier's face. In the blink of an eye we see that child's face go from eager anticipation to one of absolute despondency. What's terrifying is that this despondency arises not out of the child's realization that he just participated in the testing of a deadly weapon, but out of a reprimand from an older soldier. In this moment we see just how attentive those little ears, how expectant those little eyes, and how heartbroken those little bodies are. They, like all children (despite rough exteriors in some), are little followers, wanting only to please their instructors (both military and family) and be good sons and brothers. Their leaders, the hired instructors who teach the boys to shoot, march and stomp, are would-be older brothers. The tragedy is that in reality they turn out to be nothing more than enforcers of code whose necessity is only explained in terms of vengeance. When Herzog asks a child soldier why he wants to kill other little boys, the child soldier responds with something to the effect of, "They killed my mother and my brother and now I want to kill." These boys can only understand (and then still so very poorly) war in terms of schoolyard conceptions of an eye-for-an-eye and being brave. They are vulnerable, and, in one instructor's words, "pure" and ready to accept training with an "uncorrupted" (here meaning "unquestioningly willing") constitution. We thought we knew what it meant for a soldier to be called "fodder" but we don't really know until we see Herzog's close ups of the child soldiers in formation with instructors standing by and basically advertising their worth as killing machines. And if this fails to disturb us, then Denis Reichle's (co-director) postulations on the situation will. From behind the formation he looks down on the backs of the heads of the child soldiers. Turning away from them and looking off to the distance, Reichle tells us that this experience is too much for him because when he was only 11 he was recruited to fight for the Nazi's in their last hold over Berlin. "A lot of us died," Reichle says, "and it's hard not to see these children as already dead." He is right to say this because, in so many ways, these children ARE already dead. Their youths have been robbed from them, much more prematurely than we in privileged societies know and understand. Their parents, their siblings, their friends have been robbed from them. Their sense of safety in their homeland has been robbed from them. And just like the village woman with a ransacked house that Herzog interviews, they have been robbed of damn near everything except their fragile, saddened lives.

Herzog conveys all of this so simply and without affectation. The result is a deeply disturbing and wholly necessary film that tells a classic story (the stealing of youth by war and other destructive adult activities) in a singularly devastating way. You won't be the same after seeing it.