1 Chambers Alex Chambers Professor Barker RSSS304 28 November 2007 War in Post-Soviet Film As in any culture, war brings about a gamete of emotional and social query. Under the tight censorship of the Soviet Union, the arts were not free to explore the questions that war had brought about. There were no investigative films into war as the American war with Communism (Vietnam) had brought to Hollywood. It was not that film was not as popular or cultured in the East, in fact the war film has been a staple ingredient of Soviet and post-Soviet cinema (Webber and Mathers 80). Mosfilm and the new private film studios that began to arise under glasnost of the 1980s were on the other hand reflecting more on Stalin and the early dark years that had shaped the Soviet Union. The ten years (1979-1989) the Soviet Union was fighting in Afghanistan was not reflected much on the screen. Perhaps this was a generation of artists still reeling from the tents of Socialist Realism that decided to instead self censor Afghanistan out of their work, or perhaps the Purges and Stalin had not been brought to closure within the Soviet Union and still needed more questioning. By the 1990s, the modern wars of Russia could not be ignored by the arts, conservative figures estimate the causality rates for Afghanistan and Chechnya were 27,000 and 17,000 casualties respectively (Weissman 68, Weiler 110). The Chechen wars (1994-1996 and 1999-Ongoing) have now equaled the war in Afghanistan in length and there is no immediate end in sight; with in Russia, films are beginning to examine these wars and what repercussions they are having.
Chambers 2 There are three prominent films that deal with issues of modern Russian wars, Prisoner of the Mountains (1996), House of Fools (2003), and Voina (2002). Each of these films is set in the war zones of the Caucasus, though Prisoner of the Mountain never explicitly states exactly where the scenery is, and each film poses an answer to the question of post-Soviet Russianness and each film contains a different portrayal of the others. Prisoner of the Mountains and House of Fools are decidedly anti-war and share a common contrast of themes to Voina, which widely seen as anti-Chechen. There is an argument that could still be made that Voina is too an anti-war film, or at least demands for the end of the Chechen wars. Released the last year of the First Chechen War, Prisoner of the Mountains is based on the book Prisoner of the Caucasus by Leo Tolstoy written in 1872 (Webber and Mathers 84), but brought into the context of the then ongoing war in Chechnya. The director Sergei Bodrov, whose son plays the leading role, took artistic license in updating the story. Tolstoy story involved two Russian officers, brutalized by savage people of the Caucasus, where Bodrovs Russians are common enlisted soldiers who examine the lives of the simple people of the Caucasus as they are held captive. There are elements of Bodrovs rendition that are ludicrous, such as the free range to wander around the Chechen village the soldiers have while being guarded by a single person with a one barrel shot gun. This artistic license was taken to such extremes so Bodrov could guarantee to humanize the others. By not specifying the film as set in the First Chechen War, the film is free to generalize all the others of the modern Russian wars. Prisoner of the Mountains examines the others of the modern wars of Russia through the two captive Russian
Chambers 3 soldiers; these others are examined through the eyes of both the anti-war and pro-war view points inside Russia. Vanya is a young boy that is the army for his mandatory national service. He is a normal Russian from the provinces who make up a large portion of the armys combat force. When the only combat scene in the film takes place, Vanya does not fire his gun, but instead covers his ears and dives to the ground. He is in contrast to Sasha, an orphan who has only known the army as his family. Sasha represents the old Soviet philosophy of the empire building with a rifle and tank. Sasha views the nonRussians as lesser human beings and mocks them; he even kills a non-combative sheppard who just happens to be in the way of Sashas escape route. Sashas combat scene is a blaze of automatic gunfire from a hipshot and grenade launcher blasts that mow down Chechens. Vanya, the anti-war figure, befriends the villagers and accepts his captivity; importantly, Vanya is a common Russian, and he tries to understand this alien culture (Webber and Mathers 84). Vanya will not even escape when the young village girl frees him because she will be punished for his escape. It is in this scene that Vanya understands the suffering of the non-Russians, and it makes an argument that their torment is solely the responsibility of the Russian incursion. He has observed the simplistic lifestyle of the people and how fiercely they are fighting maintain it. It is in this understanding of the people that Vanya dismisses notions of Russianness and others and sees everyone as people, he understands the Russian troops are [seen as] a brutal occupying force, (Webber and Mathers 84). It is this understanding that saves Vanyas life while Sasha, who cannot understand this, is executed by the others.
Chambers 4 Similarly House of Fools humanizes the others and confronts racial notions of the war. It is based on real events that occurred in 1996 during the First Chechen War (Webber and Mathers 90). The film involves an asylum that is abandoned by the staff as Chechen forces approached. In one day, the mental patients find themselves alone, but soon occupied by a Chechen unit. The depiction of the Chechens is caring and friendly, they do not abuse the patients or mistreat them; they simply use their asylum as temporary barracks where they interact with the patients in a quite civilized manner. Both sides of the war are depicted as equals in good and evil. A Russian tank arrives to peaceful negotiate a deal for returning the body of a Chechen, while the Captains from the Russian and Chechen side count out the money to be exchanged, the Russian recognizes a tattoo on the Chechen and the two soon realize they fought alongside each other in Afghanistan. Their sadly ironic meeting is disrupted when a stoned Russian accidentally misfires his rifle, when peace is restored the two sides once again separate, knowing that they will be fighting against each other shortly. Soon shelling and combat erupts and the Chechens leave the asylum to be replaced by Russians lead by a Captain on the edge of a nervous break down. The juxtaposition of peace and humanity is shown against combat and chaos, this is done by these alternating scenes of very human Russian and Chechen characters followed by scenes of combat, explosions, and death. Both sides see rather equal representation of humanity and chaos. Much like Prisoner of the Mountains, House of Fools has humanized the others, but in Prisoner of the Mountains, the Russians are presented as the oppressor and ultimately the force of evil. House of Fools humanizes the soldiers on the ground, both Russian and Chechen. In this film, it is the soldier who is victimized and the policies that
Chambers 5 governed the war that are the prevailing evil. The individuals on both sides gain no peace or accomplishment from combat, they are juxtaposed against the characters of the asylum who are much more at peace and sane than the soldiers who have become victims of the war. The Russian Captain requires medication to continue to function and in the end, a Chechen assumes the disguise of a patient, not just to escape capture by the Russians, but to be treated. The main character Janna is a patient at the hospital who has an infatuation with the Canadian musician Bryan Adams. She is convinced that they are engaged and drifts off into fantasies where he dances and sings to her. When there is upset in the hospital from the patients or from combat, she plays her accordion and is able to find peace that everyone around her cannot; her visions of peace and harmony are starkly juxtaposed with the unfeeling callousness of the real world (Webber and Mathers 90). The relationships Janna that develops represent the fundamental humanity left in the world the movie hopes to portray. Janna is kind to Vika, the troublesome mental patient, she even tries to clean up for her when she fights the staff, there is no one she doesnt like; the most troubling issue for Janna is who she is to love. The Chechen Ahmed playfully proposes to Janna, but Janna falls madly in love with him and grapples with betraying her fantasy of Bryan Adams for Ahmed. While death and a controversial war close in around Janna, she is most worried about how to love everyone. It is in the child like ignorance of the mental patients that the director Andrei Konchalovskii encourages us to see the world from the point of view of [wars] victims, not just Chechen and Russian, but really of any war. The film breaks down Russianness and the others into the view point of the mental patients. Janna and the mental patients
Chambers 6 do not see two sides to the war, they see both Russians and Chechens as people. At the end of the film, the patients are not concerned with who is Russian or non-Russian, they are more concerned with whether a train will go by the asylum that night or not. In the innocence of these people, the racist overtone of Chechen war is abolished. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians had to struggle with who they were. No longer were they soviets of an empire, and the question of Russianness had to be asked. Both Prisoner of the Mountains and House of Fools challenge the modern wars of Russia and answer this question as there arent really Russians and non-Russians. The solution to both the wars in Chechnya and the question of Russianness is that all people are humans first. A sharp contrast to Prisoner of the Mountains and House of Fools is Voina (The War), a film that is radically anti-Chechen. A true Rambo movie, the film is centralized around a Russian soldier and a British couple that are taken captive by a unit of brutal Chechens. The film is based on actually events that took place in 1999, but with much creative license taken (Webber and Mathers 87). The group is held prisoner in a deep pit with other Russians to witness a beheading and cruel treatment as the Chechens negotiate for large ransoms. The Russian soldier, Ivan, and the Brit, John, are released but Johns fianc Margaret is held in exchange for a 2million ransom that must be paid within two months. John leaves her in the Chechen pit along with a Russian Captain to raise the money in England. Johns hardship is only more complicated as the British and Russian governments wont take action to assist him and his friends in England are lacksidazical in their support. This perpetuates a feeling that the state is not aggressive enough with the savage Chechens.
Chambers 7 John returns to Russia and recruits Ivan to lead him to the Chechen village with the 400 thousand he has raised. Ensues are gun fights and a general hip shot, macho guy slaying of Chechens as they approach the village. Ivan leads the way as he is a seasoned soldier while John struggles with the shooting of a civilian looking Chechen woman. This brief moment of compassion passes quickly and is not revisited in the film. The pair pick up a local who has an internal feud with other Chechens. This man is a symbol that not even the people of the Caucasus like each other and how malleable they can be, he is summarily threatened and beat in to submission to battle with the good guys. When they do reach the village, John finds that Margaret has been raped against the Chechens word and he in cold blood shoots the bound commander that had given his word. After decimating the entire camp and calling a helicopter air strike, the Russians and Brits simple leave the region and find themselves at a Russian airbase. It is in the scene at the base that the most powerful symbol is presented. Throughout the movie, Johns sheer determination has guided him, though he speaks no Russian and finds himself rather helpless in a foreign land. All shots of John in Russia and the Caucasus he stands away from others, especially soldiers. In contrast, Ivan fraternizes and talks shop about the combat zones with other soldiers. In this closing scene at the base, John has become a killer and no longer worries about the justness of killing; he walks right into a large group of Russian soldiers and is integrated as one of them; they all share the common bond of war and no words need be spoken. Voina does not answer what Russianness is for Russians, but explicitly identifies who non-Russians are. In this aspect, it is a return to the tenents of Socialist Realism; victory is achieved by the soldiers total and selfless devotion (Webber and Mathers 80)
Chambers 8 epitomized by John and Ivan. The film demonizes the people of the Caucasus and anyone not for their obliteration. Ivan says to John, its war [] to survive you must kill (Webber and Mathers 81) and in the end that is the sole lesson John learns. Throughout the film Ivan is narrating the story from a prison cell, where in the closing shots; he admits that though he has been arrested for carrying out combat as a civilian, he will most likely walk free. The dark scenery around Ivan and his vicious words compel the audience to feel sympathy for him, just as for John and Margaret, or the beheaded soldier, but there is no compassion for the Chechens. From the view point of the Russians, the repercussions of war are exposed in the rape of Margaret and the break up of her and John, the arrest of Ivan, the graphically depicted body count, and in the callous soldiers who John ultimately bonds with in their union forged under gun fire. Ultimately all three films carry an anti-war message that presents its own resolution to the question of Russianness. Prisoner of the Mountains calls for peace in the Caucasus and defines Russians as nobody or everybody, everyone is ultimately equally human; House of Fools also delivers a message for peace in the region and defines Russians and Chechens as equally victims of political policy despite boundaries; but in contrast to the aforementioned films, Voina presents a realistic depiction of war as brutal and evil, but instead calls to end the war by obliterating the demonized Chechens and establishment of a Russia that echos the cannons of the Soviet Union. Many will argue that Voina is fervently pro-war and its message of war [as] a means of national self-definition is overbearing, but Ivans arrest must be taken as a symbol that war is good and necessary, but the soldier on the ground remains a pawn of his government (Webber and Mathers 88). At the end of
Chambers 9 the film, there is no celebration, only shattered lives and the soldiers who bond together with this common horror they have lived through. As much as anyone may have tried to make Voina a pro-war movie, it cant be, because a pro-war movie cannot truly exist. By defining Russianness as being anything but non-Russian the film demonized the enemy, and to demonize the enemy, the good guys had to suffer. Voinas anti-war message of self preservation is just as strong, if not stronger than Prisoner of the Mountains message of extending humanity to the others. No one truly wants war, especially not the soldier that has to face a kill or be killed experience, and in this inner turmoil arises the question of who am I and who are they. For Russians and Caucasians, this question is compounded in the combat zone by the changing political climate and no person or film can define who a person much less a people are, and so this question will continue to go on as long as rifle shots reverberate.
Chambers 10 Works Cited Jebb, Cindy, P.H. Liotta, Thomas Sherlock, and Ruth Beitler. The Fight For Legitimacy: Democracy vs.Terrorism. London: Praeger Security International, 2006. Webber, Stephen, and Jennifer Mathers. Military and society in post-Soviet Russia. New York: Manchester United Press, 2006. Weiler, Jonathan. Human Rights in Russia: A Darker Side Of Reform. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc, 2004. Weissman, Fabrice, and Fiona Terry. In the Shadow of Just Wars. NewYork: Cornell University Press, 2004.