In Tranzit

This is supposedly based upon a true story. maybe the part that is true is that the Russians didn't have enough space for all their prisoners, and just dumped four dozen in a lightly staffed women's prison.

Starring Thomas Kretschmann, who managed six roles in 2008 including Wanted and Valkyrie in addition to this one. Also featuring Vera Farmiga (The Departed), who only had four roles in 2008, including The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. She has a deal with the prison Commandant, played by John Malkovich, to protect her lover from being sent to the front. Also along is Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds, The Bourne Ultimatum, 2 Days in Paris, Joyeux Noël), always a welcome addition.

It was definitely a dark and depressing film, made the more so by the constant snow. There are some SS Officers in the mix and Pavlov (Malkovich) is determined to root them out and hang them. He enlists Natalia (Farmiga) for this task. Malkovich was born for roles like this.

It is strange the the women who hated the prisoners in the beginning for killing their families manage to find forgiveness at the end so they can have sex.

It was the acting, not the script that made this worthwhile.

IN TRANZIT is one of those forgotten films the viewer wants to love: an all but unknown bit of history based on a true story that offers a different insight into the universal damage inflicted upon all peoples by WW II. The problem with this production is the embarrassingly weak script by Natalia Portonova and Simon van der Borgh, the unfocused direction by Tom Roberts and the bumpy editing by Paul Carlin. Beautifully photographed by Sergei Astakhov in a manner that emphasizes the brutality of Russian winters, setting a perfect matrix for the drama, this film had potential, but even the isolated acting contributions of a few seasoned actors cannot hide the weak script and the annoying pacing.

1946 and a Russian Women's prisoner of war camp lays unused until it is determined by one evil Russian officer Pavlov (John Malkovich) that it will become a camp for German prisoners of war to ferret out occult members of the Nazi SS group that inflicted such agony on the Russians. The camp is run by a group of angry Russian women soldiers and one Russian physician Natalia (Vera Farmiga) who together with Citizen Zina (Natalie Press) represent the humanistic side of the suffering Russian victims of the German brutality. And so it is German men, including the handsome Max (Thomas Kretschmann) who shares a mutual attraction with Natalia and the enigmatic Klaus (Daniel Brühl) among others, versus the Russian women: role reversal and gender dominance changes create the drama. One key mute figure is Andrei (the brilliant Russian actor Yevgeni Mironov), the psychologically damaged husband of Natalia, who in many ways represents the tragedy of the entire WW II on mankind. How these two groups of people interact and survive the conditions imposed on them forms the story.

Though Farmiga and Kretschmann, Press and Mironov overcome the awkward script in an attempt to suffuse this film with palpable tragedy, the result is a bumpy ride through the obvious pitfalls of amateur film-making. It could have been an important film, but is remains a minor though interesting insight as to the extended effects of war on people's psyches. Grady Harp

I expected much much more from this film. It is a good picture of what Russians camps were during and after the war concerning German POWs. But there is unfortunately something wrong in it, the relationship between characters is ankward, cheesy, too smooth, it lack pain, tragedy, at least for this kind of topic, surroundings, I guess the producers of the film wanted to bring something available for widest audiences, and not wildest...I am sure that a pure German movie would have been more powerful, grittier. There is too much romance here, too American. I am dead sure that life in those camps in Soviet Union, in 1945 and after, were far fra more awful.

Yikes! Just watched it in Russian. Fortunately I speak enough Russian to understand the voice-over; wish they had kept it in the original English and just added Russian subtitles. Kretschmann, Bruhl, Farmiga and Press all give excellent performances; Evegeny Mironov does the most amazing "silent" performance since his Russian version of Kafka's "Metamorphosis". I have no doubt that anti-German sentiment was running high in 1946 in Leningrad; nevertheless, surely there was some hope or ray of sunshine in all the gloom. I am beginning to understand why this film was not marketed in America. Unless you lived through those times, or are a student of history, the subject matter of this film may not have much appeal. Still, for you history buffs out there, don't miss some fine acting in this film.

If you have basic knowledge of ww2 and topics that relate to this movie, you won't notice the inaccuracies. But German POWs held by the soviets had a mortality rate of over 90%. The soldiers tied to Leningrad, Stalingrad, Belorussia and any SS would be killed quickly and garunteed.

Also, in the movie they are trying to root out SS. In reality all the SS had a tattoo on them indicating their blood-type and it certified their racial purity. The soviets knew of these tattoos so a quick strip search would quickly weed out the SS.

The Nazis devastated the Slav populations. They killed commissars on sight, killed almost all Russian POWs, destroyed hundreds of German towns, exterminated Russian civilian populations, broke the German-Russian non-aggression pact, sent civilians and prisoners through mine fields and used them as human shields, kidnapped aryan-looking babies for the lebensborne program, Inacted a scorched-earth policy, starved Leningrad into cannibalisn, committed genocide (especially in belorussia and Ukraine and western Russia, allied with Finland, killing off 80% of all Russian 20 year-old males by 1943, and used Slav women/children as human shields while rushing soviets positions... not to mention officially labeling Russians as "untermensch" (sub-human) and treated them with a pest-extermination attitude while refusing to acknowledge the Geneva convention; in some cases burning barns full of people and forcing POWs to lay down side by side while they freeze them to death water in order to make a sturdy ice-road.... whole areas of Russia were decimated beyond repair, hundreds of thousands of families were exterminated, countless Slavs became slaves, whole regions were burned and bulldozed to nothing, their Jews were almost wiped out and multiple generations of Russians suffered life-long ptsd.

Factoring all that it is clear to see that the Russians were unrealistically civil and empathetic towards the Germans in this movie. The women working in this camp would almost surely be widows and childless due to the war.

I don't support the treatment of German POWs and civilians after the war.... but to say I can't understand the ruthlessness of the Bolsheviks towards the Germans, would be a lie. I can't imagine the pain that nation experienced while trying to rebuild, recover and re-identify.