Military cinema is good and different. Time Out has chosen 13 important films worth viewing on the Day of Defender of the Fatherland.
"Freak cranes" (1957)
What: The Immortal Classics of the Soviet Cinema of Love during the war.
This cult film Mikhail Kalatozova on the play of playwright Viktor Rosova still remains just one of the two domestic tapes, who received the highest award of the Cannes Film Festival in his entire history. Such a high assessment is not surprising - the story of love, dwelling, separation and bitter taste of victory, played by an outstanding duet of Samoilov-Batalov and shot by the camera of the brilliant operator Urusvsky, despite its stylistic innovation, has a versatile value. The sadder that the deserved glory "fly the cranes" acquired first of all in Europe, remaining for the time being too "smart" picture for the Soviet viewer. Today, fortunately, no one has a doubt - this is one of the greatest military dramas in the history of cinema.
"Ivanovo Childhood" (1962)
What: A look at the war with the eyes of a child from director №1 in Russia.
The first full-length film Andrei Tarkovsky gather took gold at a film festival in Venice and prescribed the name of the director in the cinema textbooks. But the story of the 12-year-old intelligence officer Ivan (piercing debut of Nikolai Burlyaev), who came to the front after the death of the whole family, initially put a completely different director. Tarkovsky strongly risked, taking care of the material with a hole in the budget and the train "failed cinema", but the emotional impact of the picture overturned all negative expectations: "Ivanovo Childhood" shows one of the most accurate psychological portraits of a teenager, forever injured war.
"Road Check" (1971)
What a honest movie is about that not only heroes win war.
Like many "thaws" tapes, who offered their views on key events in the history of the country, the picture of Alexei German was held for a long time "on the shelf", released only in the rental of 1986. In all of the sympathy of the director to his heroes, one of whom was the Red Armenian surrendered by the Germans - a collaborationist who received a chance of redemption from the head of the partisan squad. However, it is deeply humanistic character so ambiguous, but from the not least truthful plot from the history of the Great Patriotic War and makes the film so relevant in our time: when the historical past is exposed in every way a revision, it will not be superfluous to remind that the victory is not only Heroes.
"... and dawns here are quiet" (1972)
What: a rapid movie about girls in war.
Like the same name of Boris Vasilyeva, the ribbon Stanislav Rostotsky about the five Zenitirians and their commander who gave an unequal fight to the Germans-saboteurs in the Karelian forest, became a real hit of Soviet rental and still listed among the favorite paintings of Russians about the Great Patriotic War. The fate of girls enrolled in the army straight from school bench, wears in this story a deliberately generalized character - and thanks to this causes the viewer even stronger emotions. We are crying because these are concrete Zhenya, Rita, Lisa, Galya and Sonya are dying from the hands of the Fascists, and because life itself in the face of young and full of bright hopes of girls goes out under the merciless oppression of war.
"Deer Hunter" (The Deer Hunter, 1978)
What are the classics of American cinema on non-heaven injuries of the Vietnamese war.
The epic three-hour Michael Cimino cloth was reproached that his scandalous scene is the game of American prisoners of war in Russian roulette - never happened in reality. Since the evidence in defense of the film was not presented, it is quite possible that the ambitious director also brought, forcing young de Niro and Wacken to blow a bullet in the temple. However, from the point of view of the picture itself, which took five Oscars and became the brightest example of anti-war cinema, it does not have an even account of any value: in the history of the life of the factory work, whose fate turned out to be brutalized by Vietnam, the roulette metaphor as madness of war is read flawless.
"Go and look" (1985)
What: a teacher a truthful film about the horrors of Nazi punitive operations.
Like "Ivanovo Childhood", "Go and see" talks about the great domestic eyes of a teenager - the Belarusian Boy Flear, who has witnessed the activities of the German squadron of death. However, no symbolism and aesthetic perfection of Tarkovsky you will not find here. On the contrary, the director, element of Klimov, removes the extremely straightforward, in some sense, grounded cinema, giving the horrors of the war in the film full growth. And like a flat, frighteningly plausively played by Alexei Kravchenko, once seen, forget them will never work already.
"Platoon" (Platoon, 1986)What: Examples of the movie that in the war is the main battle - for the soul of the soldier.
For Oliver Stone, more than a year who served as part of the Infantry Division during the Vietnamese campaign, the "platoon" became a lot of breakthrough work: the picture received the main awards of the Western film industry, from Oscar to the "Golden Globe", and Stone finally established itself as an uncompromising Director. At the same time, his film, telling about the difficult relationships of soldiers within the framework of one platoon, although the pawless details of the military life, and in general, are symbolic and in some sense even religious character. Despite the likelihood of soldiers' life, unprecedented at American cinema (see "Hunter on deer"), General promise Stone in philosophically universal: There is nothing heroic in the war, and the notorious struggle of goodness with evil happens first of all in the man itself.
"All-metal shell" (Full Metal Jacket, 1987)What are the powerful anti-Militarist statement from the author of the "Space Odyssey".
The famous Painting Stanley Kubrick on how in the USA from Mamajniki Sokes grown killers for Vietnam, has long been spent in the tops of the main anti-war films of all time. At the same time, it is impressive here in the first place not naturalistic combat scenes, but episodes of military training, conducted under the leadership of the fanatical sergeant Hartman. The focus of an officer who interses the building teams with selected curses and drives into the heads of recruits the names of famous criminals as examples for imitation, still did not lose their effect or relevance. As well as the film itself, imagining the line under the understanding of the Vietnamese war by the American filmmakers of the 20th century.
"Thin Red Line" (The Thin Red Line, 1998)What: Epic Cinema of God in War.
With this picture, one of the most outstanding and no one like directories of the new Hollywood - Terrence Malik - returned to the cinema after 20 years of voluntary hermit. Its three-hour military epic formally covers only one episode from the multi-stage battle for Guadalcanal. However, the future author of the "Tree of Life" already produces signs of the big style, which will fully reveal in his future tapes: turns out the camera from the actors to palm trees and bugs, uses the ausover as the main tool of the narrative and furnaces the fierce scene of the battle of documentary inserts from Wildlife in the world. In a word, having spoiled on all the laws of the genre and developed by the concept of the Industry, paints the real poetic film, in which horses are prevented in a bunch, people, and between the lines suddenly breaks the frequency truth about the sad device of this world.
Waltz with Bashir (Vals Im Bashir, 2008)What is the recognition of an Israeli soldier about an ambiguous case in the history of the country.
Like the "platoon" Oliver Stone, "Waltz with Bashir" is entirely and fully founded on the personal experience of his director Ari Folman, in the early 1980s participating in hostilities in Lebanon on the side of Israel. Moreover, the film is practically a documentary, turning to the confessional story of the Folmin himself and his colleagues that they survived, being 19-year-old infantrymen during the notorious massacre in Sabra camps and Shatila. The exceptional in this cinema can be called a lot, starting with the already mentioned tone tone and ending with a unique animation style designed specifically for the picture. However, as in the famous documentary evidence of "Shoa", the very fact of the recognition of the accomplishment of atrocities is most important here - a step on which the states themselves who participated in it have not managed to go.
"Lord of the Storm" (The Hurt Locker, 2008)What: weekdays of American sappers in Iraq from the creator "on the crest of the wave".
Before Catherine Bigelou Cinema (not to mention the literature) more than once applied to the topic "War - the main drug of mankind." But the success of the "Lord of the Storm", which earned six Oscar premiums, not in the novelty of the conflict, but in the everyday intonation, with which this story is told. Bigelou, being the author of extremely dramatic militants and political thrillers, for the first time in his career retreats from the usual techniques and removes tense cinema about a person and his calling (the breakthrough role of Jeremy Renner, known on the MARVEL films), in which the Iraqi war serves only the necessary background. And here's miracles: Without unnecessary drama, with the help of a hand-made camera and a firmly shot down plot, she turned out a degenerated portrait of a modern American who would envy himself.
"For conscience reasons" (Hacksaw Ridge, 2016)What: The Humanistic Cinema is about the victory of the Spirit over the horror of the war.
In this deliberately melodramatic picture, with which Mel Gibson returned to the director after a ten-year exile from Hollywood, seemingly too many beautiful soldiers, beautifully flying in beautifully removed angles under beautifully uttered words. Actually, after the opening combat scene, it is possible to decide that we have the next cranberries about the American patriotism, in which the horrors of the war are justified by the vocation over. Fortunately, the humanistic nature of this tape, by contrast, can only be envied. Gibson, who was previously flashing for the history of Christ, removes at all the biography of the Capral Desmond of Dossa - the real soldier-refusal, who pulled out 75 people during the battle for Okinawa without a single shot - and the natural life of the saint, whose spirit broke not only the dislike of cynical colleagues, but And almost humbled the death itself. And as in the finals, the soldiers tend the heads before the artist Garfield, on which the image is sitting both in the wrong, and we turn out to be unarmed in front of the director's genius of Gibson, who removes a large duddy cinema, perhaps, like no other.
"They will never be older" (They Shan NOT GROW OLD, 2018)
What are the innovative documentary about the First World War.
"They will never be older" It is customary to submit as the technical achievement of Peter Jackson, which by order of the Imperial Military Museum "revived" 100 hours of archival filming with the help of computer technologies, sound effects and audio cuts of real veterans of the First World War. In the hands of the "Lord of the Rings" director, the material really acquires not only the color and sound, but also the epic scope, which in the day with fire will not be in the chronicle of those years. And yet the main effect, oddly enough, do not produce non-technical innovations in the image processing, and the voices of direct participants of the war mounted by Jackson into a consistent story and existing on the picture. It is their delicate and coarse, emotional and dry memories of military life, cases on the advanced, fear of death and return home report the film that supernatural liveliness, which is not capable of any, even the most advanced device in the world. And therefore, probably, the heart is so hard when they suddenly realize that all these people are no longer alive.