Given that director Sergey Bondarchuk's curriculum includes such works as War and Peace (1965-1967) and Waterloo (1970), I thought this movie would be worth a view. I was somewhat disappointed. The problem is not Bondarchuk's direction but the script, written by him and Mikhail Sholokhov on the basis of one of the latter's works, They Fought for Their Country.(1942).
Sholokhov is an enigmatic writer. His fame stems mostly from the novel Quiet Flows the Don (4 vol, 1928 to 1940), which was widely read, praised, and the main reason for him to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965. Quiet Flows the Don stands so far above the rest of Sholokhov's output that questions (never resolved) have been raised about his authorship. In particular, They Fought for Their Country and this movie script belong to the rest and are not particularly compelling.
The subject is the first disastrous months of the German invasion in 1941 and the bravery and resilience of Soviet soldiers, which eventually turned the initial catastrophe into a juggernaut that utterly destroyed Nazism. Good intentions surely, but realization leaves something to desired. We are mostly witnesses to interminable conversations among the soldiers and scenes that are extended beyond reason, which produces a slow and overlong movie. Humor is strained, war scenes are not entirely credible and acting, although generally good falls here and there in over/the/top territory. There are other movies (such as Elem Klimov's Come and See, 1985) that do a better job of depicting the grim nature of WWII in the Soviet Union.
Sholokhov is an enigmatic writer. His fame stems mostly from the novel Quiet Flows the Don (4 vol, 1928 to 1940), which was widely read, praised, and the main reason for him to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965. Quiet Flows the Don stands so far above the rest of Sholokhov's output that questions (never resolved) have been raised about his authorship. In particular, They Fought for Their Country and this movie script belong to the rest and are not particularly compelling.
The subject is the first disastrous months of the German invasion in 1941 and the bravery and resilience of Soviet soldiers, which eventually turned the initial catastrophe into a juggernaut that utterly destroyed Nazism. Good intentions surely, but realization leaves something to desired. We are mostly witnesses to interminable conversations among the soldiers and scenes that are extended beyond reason, which produces a slow and overlong movie. Humor is strained, war scenes are not entirely credible and acting, although generally good falls here and there in over/the/top territory. There are other movies (such as Elem Klimov's Come and See, 1985) that do a better job of depicting the grim nature of WWII in the Soviet Union.