The pitfalls of modern military cinema

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In fact, the entire post-Soviet military cinema is one continuous storyline of Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago". It seems that the cinema was stuck in 1989, 31 years behind the mentality of the people. Censorship has changed the pole, but not the grip. Our cinema has become archaic and frozen in perestroika like a fly in amber. Technical improvements are offset by an absurd ideological posture.

It is very difficult to make modern films about the war. Here, the generally accepted cliches and clichés have already formed, to go beyond which means to put oneself outside the prescribed course and lose the prospect of continuing to work in cinema.

Quote from the movie "Bastards". Dir. Alexander Atanesyan. 2006. Russia

The directors find themselves in a situation of conflicting demands: not to disclose the content of Soviet ideology, to keep silent about it as the most important secret, by indirect signs showing the system clearly negatively, but with sympathy for heroes far from politics. So secretly and gently propagandized lack of ideology - the main tenet of liberalism. Don't say yes and no, don't take black or white.

The most interesting thing is that the dispute with the West continues about the "inadmissibility of rewriting history."

Soviet people did not live in a vacuum, but in an ideologically tense environment. He came out of the revolution and two wars (World War I and Civil). He was being prepared for new wars and sacrifices, and it was necessary to explain why these sacrifices were needed. This was not abstract patriotism, but Soviet patriotism, ideological. “For the Motherland” meant “For Stalin,” not for a person with a cult, but for a symbol of socialism.

Red patriotism was hostile to white patriotism and monarchist patriotism. They saw the Fatherland and its fate differently. That is why they were on opposite sides of the front line during that war. If there is a war now, what will our people put into the word "Motherland"? Considering that even on the topic of coronavirus, they have fierce disputes, not to mention our history?

In our cinema, that era is marked by portraits of Stalin and background slogans. Nothing more. The world of Soviet people in each scenario needs to be completely depoliticized and disclosed outside the historical context, exclusively through everyday situations, mainly confused love and conflicts with the authorities - topics that are close to our contemporaries and facilitate the self-identification of viewers with heroes.

Retelling the content of Soviet ideology as the reason for the perseverance and mobilization of movie characters is prohibited, so as not to inadvertently arouse sympathy for it among the current viewer. One cannot say a word about the role and authority of the Komsomol and the Communists in organizing defense in that war. It's about the same as if in the film "Andrei Rublev" it is forbidden to mention Christianity and only show girls bathing, haymaking and travel.

Today's cinema about the war, sharing the opinion of the then and current enemies about our then Fatherland, needs to somehow explain the reason for their conflict with us. For this, the historical conflict of two social systems has to be reduced to the portrayal of Stalin and Hitler as insane psychopaths and pathological sadists.

It's just that two "bad guys" in the absence of "normal democracy" ended up in power in two countries and therefore misled huge masses of people. The principle of historicism (to interpret the past not from the standpoint of modernity, but from the standpoint of the views of contemporary contemporaries) is strictly prohibited in feature films.

Quote from TV / s "Saboteur". Dir. Andrey Malyukov. 2004. Russia

History remains politics turned into the past, while history itself is not written by historians, but by political victors. As a result, movies about the war are vulgar propaganda artifacts, and if in Hollywood they are saturated with American ideological criteria, then in Russia we see the same American criteria performed by Russian directors themselves.

In the conflict between the NKVD and the Red Army, our cinema copies the moves of German propaganda at the Nuremberg trials: they say, there was a conflict between the SS and the Wehrmacht. Remember the general's thesis in the dialogue with Stirlitz in the carriage? "They burned the SS, we fought." To which Stirlitz reasonably objected: "Have they invented another way to fight without burning and without victims?"

It is clear that the Germans so wanted to take the gallows away from themselves, but in fact there was no difference between the Wehrmacht and the SS for the Soviet people. But the German position turned out to be so attractive and fruitful for the new Russian elite that it was literally copied under tracing paper. The army had to be de-ideologized and encouraged to defend the liberal system without asking questions. This was not possible by pinning the same charges on the army as on the special services.

Therefore, the place of the SS in our cinema was taken by the bestial NKVD officers, and the place of the Wehrmacht was taken by the soldiers and officers of the Red Army. The opposition "evil special services is a bad, but good army" is not only stamped into circulation, but also carried over to our time. For the domination of the liberals, the conflict between the FSB and the Ministry of Defense is very useful. Here it is possible to expose the siloviki as a sort of beech-byak, and to keep the army from solidarity with the special services. By sharing, they dominate. So then convince the "dear Russians" that Stalin and Hitler are not twin brothers!

Quote from the movie "The First After God". Dir. Vasily Chiginsky. 2005. Russia

At the same time, the political instructors completely disappeared from the military plots. In the battle between the NKVD and the Red Army, they are not. Special officers are completely maniacs and bloodsuckers, and the military are victims of totalitarianism and knights without ideology and party affiliation, simply caught between the hammer of the party and the anvil of the NKVD.

The special officer is the executioner, the soldier is the victim, who is pressed from both sides by the barrage detachments and the fascists, the difference between which is increasingly lost. And since our army is of the people, the soldier who got between the NKVD and the Wehrmacht is the people who got between Stalin and Hitler. This is not said out loud directly, but this is what is suggested to the viewer.

In fact, the entire post-Soviet military cinema is one continuous storyline of Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago". It seems that the cinema was stuck in 1989, 31 years behind the mentality of the people. Censorship has changed the pole, but not the grip.

The gap between the concepts of our political elite and the people, who have long overcome and outlived a view of history according to the version of the era of late perestroika, is growing and deepening. After all, our cinema still serves the formally forbidden, but strictly executed liberal ideology. Try to shoot a film on other ideological positions - and you will understand the illusiveness of the constitutional clause on the ban on ideology.

Our cinema has become archaic and frozen in perestroika like a fly in amber. Technical improvements are offset by an absurd ideological posture. After all, it is quite clear that after 2014, our imitation of the West in the ideological presentation of the war must somehow change.

Quote from t / s "Shtrafbat". Dir. Nikolay Dostal. 2004. Russia

Today, the negativization of the image of the NKVD is already perceived as a blow to the current National Guard and the FSB, which perform the same functions of protecting the state. After all, the message such a movieclearly visible - our special services are strangling democracy and violating human rights. If Russia is the successor to the USSR, then the special services will maintain continuity.

The attempts of our cinema to rehabilitate the tsarist investigation and counterintelligence, but at the same time to denigrate the NKVD, look ridiculous. In each of our states, special services are on guard. Turning them into criminals is working for the enemy. Hollywood never portrays the CIA as a criminal organization. There may be individual criminals, but not the entire organization that finds and punishes criminals.

What can be the continuity of history and consensus on the basis of patriotism, when the ideological war continues over our history in cinema, which remains the most important of the arts, judging by the place of Hollywood in the global psychological war. I just want to ask Gorky's question to our engineers of human souls: "With whom are you, masters of culture?"