Review of The Forty-First

An exceptional movie - considering the production company (and country), it's ideology and even more so the writer and the period when the novel was written. I had assumed that it would be normal propaganda movie - instead of the Nazis/ Communists all black and stupid, it would be the other way, the White Czarists painted in black. To my delight it wasn't exactly that. The propaganda element, if it was there, was equally balanced on the views of the other side too. The movie getting passed through the iron hand, I could assume, was because the self-confidence of the Soviets at that time. They could afford to be a bit lenient, by hinting on the enemies psyche too, and that too a bit sympathetically - which naturally the insecure Hollywood couldn't afford to. There were of course a few minor forays, like "The Russians Are coming" but they didn't go to the subject in a serious way, like this one did. I really don't wonder it getting the prizes and nomination at Cannes, and would only say, it deserved. There isn't much at the story - the top sniper of the Bolsheviks, a girl, gets marooned in an island - and becomes Girl Friday to her captive a high ranking White Army Officer, carrying secret missives to the General. On the way to the Red bastion, where the Officer was to be interrogated and afterwards shot (something that happened to many others, including General Kolchak, referred to in the movie). The characters portrayed are completely human and the motives are completely natural, even in the end when the officer, despite professing his romantic associations - not only with the Red Girl, but also even before her, with the Red movement itself (from which, due to explained reasons, he was forced to side against), is overjoyed to find the distance sail belongs to his rescue party - the Whites. It is natural - since on the side of red, he was to undergo torture (interrogation), and then volley of Bullets, while he stood in front of a wall - a la Admiral Kolchak and many others in real life - and like most of them, he too would have been innocent of the crimes. However the girl, he could have managed to get a pardon, considering the power he yielded. The balance clearly tilted in favour of his rejoining the white. The end, might be heart rendering, but was the only possibility in people entangled in any war - where people, yearning for peace, who could have been friends or lovers end up in opposite sides of the fence.