Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tinear (A) on November 30, 2007 at 16:33:07

incredible promise here is shown: the film must take a place as one of the great war genre films of all time.
Near the end of WWII, a young boy whose family has been wiped out by the Germans, seeks revenge by becoming a scout along the front lines.
Being a Tarkovsky film, one would expect side-stories, unusual soundtrack effects, beautiful music, powerful cinematography, a dream-like quality---and one would not be disappointed.
The young boy simply is brilliant with not one iota of false sentimentality, gesturing, or expression.
As is true with this director's films, the impact doesn't occur until several hours later when the mind has had a chance to make sense of the seemingly unconnected images. His father was a not unknown poet and it has been said (by a commentator on the dvd, actually...) that Tarkovsky considered himself poet-like. His greatest disdain was for his contemporaries who depicted "social realism".
The penultimate scenes are some of the most chilling I've ever seen, showing actual footage of Nazi atrocities committed against themselves in their death throes; the scenes of the Berlin site of interrogation and torture, the instruments, are terrifying.
Finally, Tarkovsky ends the film with a vision that somehow makes the viewer have hope for the future, in spite of the horrors he has just witnessed.
A masterpiece.