148 Ballad of a Soldier

[zedz]

I'm pretty sure that was a conversation of VN's own invention, but it's too good a story not to pass on.

Nevsky has the right attitudes (and unbearably simplistic characterization), but it's stylistically an outlier as far as socialist realism goes. I think the 'realism' part of the designation is primarily there to signify "for Lenin's sake, not formalism!" By the time socialist realism took hold, formalism was regarded by the Soviet authorites as a cardinal sin, a smuggler's case for bourgeois, decadent, capitalist values. 'Socialist realism' is often thought of as 'a boy and his tractor' storylines, but it could encompass a range of different subjects. The main thing was that they needed to be narratively straightforward, unambiguous embodiments of Soviet values, which could be defined narrowly (the specific agricultural policy of the current Five-Year Plan) or broadly (the right kind of patriotism). The films needed to be understood completely by the least sophisticated farmworker and moreover by Party officials in Moscow, an even lower common denominator.

[Shrew]

Yeah, Socialist Realism isn't about realism so much as it is about making sure everything projects proper Socialist values and ideology. That means eschewing Formalism, or "art for art's sake," i.e. crafting things that don't have a clear decipherable message. Something that was pretty just for the sake of being pretty could be seen as devoid of Socialist value. Experimentation and technical skill could be appreciated, but only so far as in how they helped clearly communicate the necessary message. The Realism is, as zedz says, more not-Formalism/not-Abstraction; it has nothing to do with neo-realism or capturing any nitty-gritty of life as it is. As you may notice in this film, a lot of the people are pretty cleancut for going through a horrific war.

The reason I brought up the question is because Ballad of a Soldier strikes me as a descendant of Socialist Realist film, despite its formal flourishes, and thus inherits much of the genre's weaknesses. A lot of this comes down to the very simplistic characterization of everyone, and the way Alyosha is portrayed as such a perfect Model Solider. There are a lot of stunning shots (say, Alyosha's mother looking out at the road) framed in such a way to reinforce the strength of the Russian Peasant or Woman or Soldier. While the war is certainly omnipresent, it's weirdly abstract, and the stakes appear to be more about generalized loss (of love, of family, of happiness) than about survival or struggle. It does break free when it explores individual feelings of passion or loss, but to me a lot of the film is waiting for these moments of sublime poetry in a sea of accomplished but rote prose.

So for me, the film is less than the sum of its parts. I'm also not a big fan of Alyosha and Susha's romance. It plays through a lot of obvious beats, and the chemistry between the leads is mostly just endless face-ogling. Zhanna Prokhorenko is a very lovely actress and I understand why the camera keeps going back to her, but at times it gets almost uncomfortable. That and Susha feels like the Communist version of that crazy Fundamentalist Christian girl from high school. But I do think it finally clicks in the moment after Alyosha sneaks Susha onto the train. The crane to close-up of the two smiling at each other as the train rolls away and the background simply becomes blank sky laced with smoke is lovely and simple, and free from the awfully structured routine of their "meet-cute" in the hay car. Then the overlap of Susha on the birch forest is a lovely evocation of regret. And of course the final reunion with the mother is well done, particularly how the bombastic score drops out once the two embrace.

I actually find the opening fight to be very "Soviet" rather than American. The other solider is clearly just there to better juxtapose Alyosha's heroism with his own self-serving cowardice and is quickly and appropriately punished. An American movie might have done the same thing, but the dead guy would have either been a bigger, more villainous bully, or it would have played up the brotherhood among the soldiers. I remember being impressed with the tank sequence the first time I watched the movie, but this second time the lone tank chasing one soldier over the battlefield looked laughably absurd (though the upside down shot is still stunning). It also felt familiar somehow, almost like some bit out of silent comedy. Is there a similar setup in Medovkin's Happiness or something? Maybe a later parody?

Actually, I was throwing around another possible question to spark discussion: Do you think Alyosha grows throughout the narrative? As much as this is a coming of age story, I actually don't think Alyosha is particularly dynamic, and that's a problem for me. He becomes a bit more confident in himself, but there's no real changing of view or broadening of experience. It's almost a picaresque (or a reverse picaresque following a more moral protagonist) in that Alyosha seems to have more effect on those he meets than they do on him.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm pretty sure that was a conversation of VN's own invention, but it's too good a story not to pass on.

That did occur to me when I was typing that out. If it's not true, it should be.

[Shrew]

In similar stories, the 20s-30s Chinese writer Lu Xun never joined the Communist Party, despite leaning politically to the left. Supposedly, he once said that the ideal Soviet poem was:

Oh steam engine!
Oh Lenin!

[YnEoS]

I'm not sure if Socialist Realism is necessarily the best entry way into this film. And it might be useful to distinguish between the period of heavy Stalinist censorship as a whole, the Socialist Realist genre, and good old fashioned nationalistic propaganda. From my understanding, WWII movies in the Soviet Union didn't usually follow the Socialist Realist format, they were propagandist and often caricatured the Nazis. But most filmmakers were fairly enthusiastic about making these films, and very little regulation or oversight was put over them. Though a lot of key films form this period like Rainbow (Mark Donskoy, 1944) don't have English versions available, so I can't say I've verified all of this personally.

One interesting point of comparison might be Mashenka (Yuli Raizman, 1942), which was originally being made as a romantic comedy when the Nazis invaded and it was quickly re-written to deal with war themes. Like Ballad of a Soldier, the film focuses on the romance with war more as a background element, and uses similar narrative devices of the resulting chaos and confusion pulling two potential lovers away. Though the film is much more optimistic and there's a sense that no matter how many times they're separated they'll always run into each other again.

My understanding was that these later war films made during the thaw weren't so much an overturning of old viewpoints but just were allowed a freedom for an expression of a greater range of human emotions. Filmmakers were able to directly address the tragedy and loss of the war for the first time. And from what I've read the international popularity of these films was in part that it was seen as the soviet union finally showing its human face. The caricature of the old stalin-era censor in Carnival Night (Eldar Ryazanov, 1956) isn't so much that he's forcing everything to be optimistic and nationalistic, but that he doesn't understand subtle humor of their art and constantly creates more problems for the artists by forcing changes on them without providing any interesting creative solutions.

Also worth nothing, I believe that while Stalin's policies sapped all creative options from filmmakers, the huge financial investment into the industry also made it technically quite advanced, though it would decline soon after. So part of the draw of these initial thaw films is that they were made when the industry was still at a fairly high technical level, but without the creative limitations imposed by the old system. So we still have these idealized characters, but they're allowed to have personal goals like wanting to visit their mom at home instead of bravely continuing to fight on the front, and sneaking past authority figures and bypassing regulations when their instincts tell them they're right in doing so.

I think I am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiyev, completed 1961, released 1965) probably best expresses a lot of themes and emotions running through this era. But, it's delayed release and censorship show what kind of limits still hung over the films being made this time. Even though the films ultimate message isn't too critical, it probably ventured a bit too far in depicting youth independent from the advice of the old authority.

The Criterion Article for Ballad of a Soldier gives a good idea of the circumstances and feelings within which the film was received. I think Grigori Chukhrai, being a war veteran, and making this film rather later into the period, was fully aware of the sentimental and idealized portrait he was painting. But far from playing it safe and keeping to the old Stalinist codes, I think his concerns were more practical, and I think he understood the need for a generic idealized main character if he's going to be a stand in for the millions of Russian soldiers who died in WWII. For me this has never hurt my narrative experience, the film is so carefully crafted in terms of narrative tension, that I'm always absorbed into the situations and struggles of the character. It's quite simple at heart, but that's part of what makes it so endearing to me and ultimately, so tragic.

[warren oates]

So for me, the film is less than the sum of its parts. I'm also not a big fan of Alyosha and Susha's romance. It plays through a lot of obvious beats, and the chemistry between the leads is mostly just endless face-ogling.

I've only seen this film once, a few years ago, but this was my overwhelming impression. I remember finding the film overwrought and almost instantly forgettable. And I couldn't help comparing it to other contemporary Russian films about WWII, like The Cranes are Flying and Ivan's Childhood. It seems to me that, at that time, working with a WWII story -- so long as the filmmaker checked off certain boxes about the grit and heroism of the Russian people and the resilient strength of the Soviet system -- was basically a free pass. And geniuses like Kalatozov and Tarkovsky definitely made the most of it. So has anybody seen Chukhrai's other films? Are any of them more interesting than this one?

[domino harvey]

I remember finding the film overwrought and almost instantly forgettable.

When this title won I had to confirm with my viewing logs that I have indeed seen this, because you're right about the second part of this sentence-- I remember nothing about this film from my viewing six years ago other than that I've seen it and it was (I'm shoulder shrugging here)

[swo17]

So has anybody seen Chukhrai's other films? Are any of them more interesting than this one?

The Forty-first is dazzling. Thematically, it's probably fairly comparable to Ballad. But its visual sense and use of color are really something else. This is perhaps mostly owing to Sergei Urusevsky, who also lensed those three late, great Kalatozov films.

[Drucker]

Damn I'm really in disagreement here. Of course it's not Ivan's Childhood but I don't think Tarkovsky is a very helpful reference point! To me, this is closer to something like Il Posto. A short, minor tale done really well, where a young man is taking his first steps in the world. At the start, I really get the sense from the way his fellow soldiers rag on him that him and the people that seem to be his age (the ones convincing the head officer to spare the soap!) are very, very young and probably just left home. While the film is obviously a war movie, I still see it more than anything as a coming of age tale.

I suppose when I said the opening shot was "American" I meant it felt more like an action movie than something like Ivan's Childhood. But if the romance between the two is weird and awkward, to me, that's the result of all romance around that age group. It certainly seems that the two have never had a real relationship with someone before (especially since the girl jumps to having a fiancee). Lastly, I strongly disagree with the notion that Aloysha is portrayed as a "model" soldier. Throughout the film, he's ragged on and given sarcastic guff by people who find out he's on leave. The only person who spares him is the officer that finds him in the train car, and he's not spared from him because he's a "model", he's spared because the other guy who told on him is even worse than he was. This was a really nice, informal touch that I don't think I've seen in many Soviet films: an officer letting a kid off the hook for breaking the rules with a little wink. It's a delightful touch which separates this from other Soviet-esque films (or what I imagine them to be like).

And again, Aloysha's worldview and spirit are broken a bit when he finds out the soldier's wife is cheating on him. But when he tells the father all those lies, that was a very moving part of the film for me. Perhaps that seems counter-intuitive, but it was him realizing the world is not black and white. While the soldier on crutches he meets earlier is told he cannot abandon his wife, the reality is that the person who chastised him doesn't really know what's going on in his life. That same "world is not black and white" lesson applies to the scene in the hospital for me. Life isn't as simple as right and wrong, truth vs. lie. Every situation calls for something different, and while he told off the wife he delivered the soap to, he didn't have the heart to tell the father about his daughter-in-law.

I'm not saying this was a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking. But I did love it! And I still stand by the ending, as well, which is excellent in that the time spent with mom feels as short for us as it does for him, especially after all he's been through.

[zedz]

Damn I'm really in disagreement here. Of course it's not Ivan's Childhood but I don't think Tarkovsky is a very helpful reference point! To me, this is closer to something like Il Posto. A short, minor tale done really well, where a young man is taking his first steps in the world.

If you describe it like that, I suppose there's a comparison, but I'm not watching films for their TCM blurbs. Where Il Posto leaves this film in the dust is that it's crammed with vivid, idiosyncratic characters and incident. Ballad of a Soldier is crammed with stock figures and really struggles to do anything unusual with them, even at a formal level. It was considerably more stylish than the standard Soviet output of the era, which is why it got international attention, but alongside The Cranes Are Flying - not to mention the explosion of innovative young directors that would follow in the 60s - it's strictly a museum piece for me.

Somebody must have voted for this film! What have they got to say about it?

[Drucker]

Insert Simpsons I voted for Kang JPEG here

[Shrew]

To clarify, I don't think this is a bad film or terrible Soviet propaganda. I just feel that despite some great sequences and technical skill on display, the narrative is overly formulaic and there isn't much growth or drama. I find Il Posto a weird but kind of apt comparison, but for different reasons. Neither of them are "coming-of-age" films in a traditional sense, because the protagonists don't really grow or learn anything during their journey. They aren't so much becoming men as they are just getting acclimated to the adult world. In Il Posto, that means seeing the mechanized drudgery of office work awaiting this eager young kid, and in Ballad of a Soldier, that means giving Alyosha more and clearer reasons as to Why He Fights. But we don't really see the kid in Il Posto grow into an office worker, or see Alyosha make a decision or change his reasons to return to the front. They end with their characters in the same places they began, awkwardly trying to fit in at the office and heading off to war.

What I mean by calling Alyosha a model solider isn't that the he's the perfect fighting machine, but that he's unfailingly polite and chipper, always eager to his duty and serve the country, and has an uncomplicated moral compass. He stands up for himself when unfairly hassled, but does so non-violently. He reminds me a lot of "Lei Feng," a low-ranking solider in the Chinese military who died in an accident and left behind a diary (this of course was a fabrication by the CCP) detailing how he always strove to do his best for others and the country even though he led a lowly and mundane life. He was essentially THE role model in 1960s China.

A lot of the various For example, the greedy train guard admits that corruption and graft is possible on small, local levels, but constrains that to a few "bad apples." It lets the system and authority figures off the hook (and indeed, the Lieutenant shows up and punishes the guard and rewards Alyosha's honesty).

Likewise the incident with the soldier's wife, which I don't think really challenges Alyosha's worldview, other than making him aware that there are still "capitalist" elements left in the country. A challenge to his worldview would have been if he found the wife and it turned out she was terrified of her husband because he beat her. Here, the soldiers fighting for the country are all still well and good, and so are most of the people, but there are a few who aren't good and cause suffering for others (and Alyosha and the film both clearly judge the wife as wrong, despite her pleas). Everything stays pretty black and white. The whole plot compares unfavorably to The Cranes are Flying, (a much more fitting point of comparison than Ivan's Childhood, which is a more iconoclastic example of Soviet cinema, even if it's relatively mainstream for Tarkovsky) which contains a similar scenario and similar moralistic conclusion, but devotes more time to the circumstances and consequences.

To end a long-winded post, Ballad of a Soldier is a eulogy to the youth and potential lost on the bloody Russian Front of WWII, and as such Alyosha has to represent all these soldiers (and their mothers' lost sons and girls' lost loves). I think trying to hold up all that weight ends up being a detriment to the film, as Alyosha never really becomes his own character. At times it's very moving, but in an abstract way, like a series of Eisenstein model-actors portraying "Soldier" "Mother" and "Love interest." Compared to something like The Best Years of Our Lives, filled with lived-in specificity, it can't help but feel a bit hollow, if beautiful.

[YnEoS]

I agree with most of what you say, though for me having flat characters isn't necessarily a severe problem in itself, though it can often be an indicator of lazy filmmaking that relies to heavily on types. But when the narrative is built strongly enough, I think you can still invest in a character's goals and journey, even if they're not a particularly interesting specimen.

As I touched on before I think the film is quite strong in terms of its overall narrative journey. Take for example the stow away scene, first we learn the situation and the stakes, the upper officer is really strict and he'll be in big trouble if he gets caught. Then when Shura enters in and introduces the romance plot, it also complicates the current incident as he doesn't just have to keep himself unnoticed but also worry about how she'll act, there's a higher chance of getting caught because she's more of an unknown factor. Then when the guard discovers them he has to mediate between his anger at the guard for his crude jealousy and his dependence on him to keep them hidden. Then when they're discovered and it's all resolved there's the nice comedic punchline that the upper officer is strict only from the point of view of the lazy corrupt guard. All the built up tension is diffused and we can laugh out our previously misplaced fears.

I think hundreds of other films with these characters fall flat because they think their inherently likable characters will automatically result in an emotional film, who doesn't want to see the good solider re-unite with his mother? But this film takes the time to get the spectator involved rather than simply relying on its content. The driver who takes him to the mother is hesitant at first so we understand the weight of him disobeying his duty to take this side trip. He is constantly weighing how much trouble he may or may not get in, and it makes us worry that he may change his mind at any time. Then there are two almost near misses, first when they get home to find the mother is in the fields, then when she runs home almost too late as they leave to look for her. These narrative delays and tensions help build up the anticipation of their final reunion and makes it much more emotionally satisfying than if we just got a bunch of gauzy filters and ecstatic camera movement.

I don't want to necessarily tear down the Cranes are Flying just to build up Ballad of a Solider, cause I think Cranes is a pretty remarkable film. But I've always had more difficulty getting emotionally vested in Cranes, and I think it relies a bit too much on emotions inherent in the situations it presents, its expressive cinematography, and Tatyana Samojlova's incredible performance. I like all those things, but I always find that a little extra narrative legwork typically makes for a much more engaging emotional experience.

I think you're correct that Ballad of a Solider is a eulogy to the youth and potential lost on the bloody Russian Front of WWII and I don't think there's anything more complex to it than that. Rather than being about the specific circumstances of war, it's about all the hopes and dreams that the war cut short. We root for Alyosha despite knowing his doomed fate, and the narrative tension is a constant reminder of how fragile those hopes are.

Now I won't argue with anyone who says that films like I am Twenty or Ivan's Childhood deal with similar themes and subject matter way more successfully, and to me those films stand as high points of the film form. But I think the transitional films of the 56-60 period are interesting, and Ballad of a Soldier is my favorite of the lot. It may be better suited as a museum piece, but I quite like museum pieces and seeing the history of how the ground was laid for my favorite films.

[Sloper]

My reaction to this film is overall pretty similar to those of Drucker, Shrew and YnEoS (great posts, by the way) – I’m probably about to repeat a lot of what they’ve said, and disagree with some of it...

I think Drucker’s emphasis on the ‘coming of age’ aspect is absolutely right. It isn’t just that Alyosha ‘becomes a man’ or even that he ‘becomes acclimated to the adult world’, as Shrew put it. The emphasis, for me, is specifically on the process whereby Alyosha is gradually and definitively alienated from his mother. Thematically, this film has a lot in common with Ray’s Aparajito. I realise that will seem a misguided (not to mention unfair) comparison in all sorts of ways, but it’s the part of Chukhrai’s film that most interested me, and is, I think, the source of its considerable pathos.

The very first shot of the film is all about age groups. You have chicks and chickens pecking at the ground; young girls and slightly older ones meeting up and running off together; a young couple with a baby. This peaceful, improbably happy world belongs to them, and the blocking of this shot emphasises the different age groups mingling with each other, culminating with the perfect husband/wife/baby unit. Through the midst of this scene the elderly Katerina wanders like a ghost, unseen by all except the family who gaze pityingly at her. She stares out at the long road just as she did when Alyosha left, like a ghost forever repeating the same action, trapped in that eternal moment of simultaneously bidding her son farewell and waiting for him to return. The opening voiceover emphasises that she knew everything about Alyosha until he left, but nothing about the adventures we’re about to see. When the close-up of her suffering eyes fades into a shot of smoke drifting over the rubble of the battlefield, the dissolve marks Katerina’s ‘loss’ of her son.

We might then think that it is Alyosha’s experience of battle that alienates him from his peaceful village home, and the mother whose existence is limited to that world. The tank battle is certainly figured as a key ‘rite of passage’ moment. I’ll resist the urge to talk about the phallic imagery in this scene... The aforementioned ‘upside-down’ shot seemed to me a lot like the kind of thing Eisenstein or Dreyer might have done to suggest the world being overturned (similar camera trickery marks the death of Joan and the revolt of the peasants in The Passion of Joan of Arc), and it also evokes a kind of tumbling descent into the depths, a traumatic ‘fall’. Alyosha confronts death and, for the moment, defeats it – with the help of a massive gun. And yet we already know that this film is not about his survival, but his demise. His victory here is just a stay of execution until he returns from his trip and dies presumably quite soon after that.

Alyosha’s request to go home to his mother is driven by two desires: to say goodbye to her properly and to fix her leaking roof. By carrying out the latter task, he would be filling the (otherwise empty) role of the man-of-the-house, confirming his graduation from boyhood – but also remaining tied to his mother. In the course of the film, he finds himself fulfilling all sorts of duties and responsibilities to people other than his mother, and it’s because he fulfils those responsibilities that he fails to fix the roof back at home. There’s an interesting moment when he flags down the truck at the end, and he holds his arms up in a way that precisely echoes the huge transmission tower standing at the right of the frame. I guess the juxtaposition suggests how Alyosha has begun to function, not as an individual who owes something to his mother, but as one element within a network, serving the needs of his country – indeed, putting the needs of total strangers ahead of those of his mother.

The brevity of his visit to his mother at the end is in direct proportion to those experiences that have distanced him from her, and when he asks her to forgive him, twice, without being able to explain what he is sorry for, I think he shows an awareness of how much he has now become a stranger to his her. She remarks on his tallness, his thinness (he lies and says this is due to his hard journey), the fact that he has started shaving, and when she asks him whether he has started smoking, there is no time for him to answer. The emotional force of this encounter derives pretty much entirely, not from a sense that Alyosha should have more time to re-connect with his mother, but from a sense that, after what he’s just been through, he doesn’t need or want more time. He suggests that they talk for a minute, but has nothing to say to her. Even this brief reunion is too long for him.

Again and again, his youth and inexperience are explicitly highlighted. When he says that he wants to go home to his mother, the first thing the General asks him is his age. As Drucker mentioned above, his youth is the key deciding factor that motivates the General’s decision. Perhaps, in giving him such a long period of leave, the General knows that this boy will gain more from the journey than from what awaits him at the end of it. When he says that ‘the way things are now’ will make it harder to travel than Alyosha realises, this comment gestures towards the harsh realities and complications that the boy will encounter on his way home.

But therein lies the problem, because as others have pointed out, the realities are never that harsh and the complications are all pretty straightforward. Only in two instances does Alyosha encounter real corruption, and on both occasions the self-serving individual is punished and put in their place. Otherwise the portrayal of authority figures is nauseatingly sycophantic, while the more lowly figures are exalted in the most condescending ways.

I agree with YnEoS’s most recent post, when he praises the construction of the film’s narrative, and of individual sequences. It’s a very well executed piece of story-telling in those terms. And the propaganda element shouldn’t necessarily ruin the effect: I have no trouble getting emotionally involved in earlier Soviet films, despite their sledgehammer dogmatism (the stirring finale of Pudovkin’s Mother springs to mind as an apt comparison in this case), or in any number of British and American war films. I think that’s because, in those films, there was a real sense of earnest and immediate investment in the characters’ plight, and in the cause for which they were fighting and dying. It might have been simulated at times, but it was very well simulated.

In Chukhrai’s film, the tributes to benevolent generals, lieutenants, sergeants, and so on, feel not just naïve but insincere, forced, as though the film is saying this stuff with a gun held to its head. A good example of what I mean comes after the incident with the ‘beast’ lieutenant who turns out to be a nice guy. Shura says to Alyosha that it’s wonderful when you think someone is bad and they turn out not to be. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘that lieutenant is very nice.’ ‘Very’, Shura says, looking meaningfully at him. She is trying to talk about her feelings for Alyosha, of whom she was initially afraid but with whom she has now fallen in love; she is grateful to the lieutenant because he has allowed her to stay with Alyosha. It’s one of many moments in the film that shows an understanding of how to enrich an exchange with multiple meanings, how to develop a relationship between two characters through small details and gestures, and generally how to tell a story and manipulate an audience. But however well executed this sequence is, it still feels phony. I suppose what it comes down to is that I just don’t believe the film really buys into this rose-tinted view of humanity, so all that emotional investment I’m supposed to be putting into the story simply doesn’t happen. When the ideology informing a work of art is this simplistic and this mechanical, any possibility of real conflict, tension or drama is killed off.

Alyosha’s lying tribute to Pavlov when talking to the old man in the gym is another good example. It should be a really powerful scene, full of pathos, full of sadness as this young soldier comes to terms with the complex moral demands of wartime, and of adult life more generally. The previous scene with the unfaithful wife, the clever use of the bubble-blowing, alarm-clock-wielding children (juxtaposed with the maturing young couple being divested of their illusions and innocence – notice Shura playing with the bubbles before and after the visit to Lizaveta, and the tonal shift accomplished here), Shura’s complicity in Alyosha’s deception, and to cap it all the way the father responds to Alyosha’s lie about Pavlov with another lie to pass on to Pavlov, and the sense that the old man is painfully aware of the illusion being fed to him...all of this should make for a really effective sequence.

I’m finding it hard to put my finger on why it doesn’t, and why this in many ways brilliant passage leaves me feeling cynically un-moved, but I think it has something to do with this ‘clockwork’ quality that infects the whole film.

Chukhrai is inordinately fond of darkening the upper part of the frame, especially when that upper part is occupied by sky, and the effect is to give the film an ‘overcast’ feel: the shadow of the war hangs over everybody. But the over-use of this visual trick is emblematic of the deeper problem I’m trying to identify. The tensions in this film are too ‘inserted’, too artificial, and are never really felt. At least that’s how it seems to me.

There are, though, three exceptions to this – that is, three tensions that seem organic, deeply felt and, so to speak, genuinely tense. One is the already mentioned over-arching theme of Alyosha’s alienation from his mother; another is the bitter note on which his relationship with Shura ends; and finally, there is the fact of Alyosha’s death.

As others have noted, at its heart this is a film about loss: the loss of innocence, of youth, and of the bond between mother and son; the loss of another kind of bond when Alyosha forms his first ever romantic relationship, only to be torn away from Shura before he can articulate his feelings; and the loss, in death, of all the potential (for love, primarily) this young man had just started to tap into before returning to his defining, annihilating role as a ‘Russian soldier’.

As I said above, I think there is a real emotional complexity to the interaction between mother and son in the final scene. Likewise, when Alyosha remembers and fantasises about Shura after parting from her (I like the way his memories are supplemented with fantasies, things that didn’t happen but might have – Shura drinking from the tap, then washing her leg), there is real poignancy in her reproachful lament, ‘You don’t love me’. The brooding Alyosha is here carefully lit so that his eyes look overcast, his face haggard, and his hair grey (the lighting usually emphasises its goldenness). I think Ivashov does a great job, here, of conveying a sense of maturity. You can see the happiness and regret conflicting in his face as he realises that he has experienced love, but that the experience has ended before he was even aware of it.

We don’t see Alyosha die, or learn anything about the circumstances of his death – it wasn’t in Russia, that’s all – so when he rides off down the road at the end, as far as we’re concerned he’s riding to his death. Although he tells his mother he’ll be back, I don’t think Alyosha comes across as having any illusions about his fate. We know he’s going to die in the war, and throughout the film it’s as if he knows this as well. The journey we see him go on ends up being the story, not just of how he comes of age, but of how he goes to his death. If only the film had focused more on the relationship with Shura, the pain of their separation at the end, the pathos of the reunion with the mother, and the anticipation of the hero’s death, I think it would have been far more powerful. As it is, those patriotic vignettes dilute the overall effect.

[MichaelB]

I'm not sure if social realism is necessarily the best entry way into this film. And it might be useful to distinguish between the period of heavy Stalinist censorship as a whole, the social realist genre, and good old fashioned nationalistic propaganda. From my understanding, WWII movies in the Soviet Union didn't usually follow the social realist format, they were propagandist and often caricatured the Nazis.

Sorry to quibble, but despite the deceptive similarity between their names, Socialist Realism and social realism have virtually nothing in common. It's hard to imagine someone like Ken Loach making much headway in the mid-20th-century Soviet Union!

To emphasise the difference, I generally capitalise Socialist Realism.

[YnEoS]

Hah, I made a mental note to double check the specific term when I was typing it out, and then completely forgot to go back.

[Lemmy Caution]

I thought this was a terrific film. I bought a public domain edition roughly 8 or 9 years ago, and then waited for the Criterion to materialize, and somewhere along the line assumed that I had seen it.
The picture quality on the PD edition isn't bad at all.

I thought the screenplay was clever in crafting meetings and chance encounters that become intersecting storylines. Maybe the cakes of soap being the best or most surprising. I also loved the innocent soap bubbles of childhood bursting when he delivers the soap. And when he takes back the two cakes of soap, in my mind, the obvious solution was to give one to Shura and one to his mother, and stop wasting valuable time in this town. But instead he feels compelled to try to make things right somehow for Pavlov, and counters the harsh truth of Pavlov's wife with gentle lies for Pavlov's father, who returns the favor.

I quite liked the doubling throughout the film.
- There's Shura who Alyosha surely falls in love with, but there's also the neighbor's daughter who seems to have a crush on Alyosha.
- The one-legged husband is afraid to go back to his wife, fearing she won't love him anymore.
While Pavlov, who sends the soap cakes and his love, believes his wife loves and is waiting for him.
They both are tragically mistaken. The crippled soldier barely corrects his mistaken belief.
And the two men are literally heading in opposite directions, one returning home, the other on his way to the front for the first time.
- And there's opening of the film, where we have two soldiers and the cowardly one who tries to save his own skin dies, while Alyosha who does his duty -- reports the tanks and fights back when he can -- becomes a minor hero.
- Even the old lady struggling to stay awake and maneuver the beaten-up truck has a son at the front, and so is a parallel to Alyosha's mother.
- The soap-cake soldier from a nearby village is essentially Alyosha a few months prior.
[so for those keeping score at home, Alyosha meets a version of his mother, himself and the girl next door]

There were lots of touches I thought worked well. The tough Lieutenant only being tough on the lazy corrupt guard. The hallucinatory tank chase, which I took to be a subjective representation of how Alyosha felt. The symbolism such as the soap bubbles, and Alyosha the hero going up in smoke (when the newspaper is used for cigarette paper). The emotional moments were effective, such as the one-legged soldier meeting his wife; finding Shura again at the train station; the parting with Shura; the ever-so-brief reunion with his mother; etc.

Great film.

[Antarctica]

I ordered Badlands on blu from Criterion, and they sent me Ballad of a Soldier on DVD. They told me to keep it. Haven't watched it, yet.

[Werewolf by Night]

Fascinating!

[MyFathersSon]

Thumbs up for the terrific music score by Mikhail Ziv.

...and the tape loop, a little recording of trainyard noises; squealing brakes and distant whistles. The loop is repeated here and there, and it's a charming piece of ambient music to my ears.