Ballad of a Soldier is the simple story of a Russian infantryman fighting during world war II. He single handedly knocks out two enemy tanks and as a reward, he is allotted six days of leave - two to travel to his hometown where his mother waits, two to stay with her and fix her roof, and two for the return journey.
The brunt of the film follows this soldier, Alyosha, as he journeys home and witnesses what the war has done to people. He meets various characters along the way and it is very intriguing to see who these people are and how the war effected them. I felt that maybe it cuts loose some of these characters too soon, but they still worked very well. The most interesting person Alyosha meets is a girl, who at first is terrified of Alyosha, but eventually gets to know him as he gets to know here, and the begin to grow closer together. I'm usually not all for love stories and what not, but this is one of the few cases where I actually thought it really worked and didn't seem forced. It was unfortunate, narratively, how their encounter ends, but while it lasts it is still beautiful.
However, the film does sometimes shamelessly tug on your strings. At the beginning it seems to suggest that somewhere along the way during Alyosha's journey, he is going to be killed as it says he will 'never walk down that road again', but it is a play on words as he actually drives down it. I found this to be supremely manipulative and quite poorly implemented. The final montage with this narration was also very much unneeded, completely irrelevant, and goes against everything the film was trying to say. However, I do not hold this against the film as it seems to be it was Communist Censors or officials that tagged on the last bit to glorify the existence of the Red Army soldier.
Overall it was very solid, and it was a beautiful story many different characters, including two who slowly fall for each other. It does encounter a few problems and has issues with scenes or dialogues needing to be completely removed, but it still was a very worthwhile experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment