Viewed: 21 May 2005
Directed by: Elem Klimov
Listed in: Movies, Netflix

Devastating. A Russian boy digs up a rifle from a buried soldier to join the Parisians fighting the Germans. In the beginning of the film he looks to be 11, by the end he is a 60 year old man in a boy’s body. His life becomes brutal as the Nazi Einsatzgruppen tries to exterminate the Russian People in their villages. It is an intense film, Elem Klimov has most characters directly face the camera, in effect directly looking at the audience. The explosions and bullets seem real, because they are. A live cow is machine gunned on screen, then a cut to a close up of its eye as it dies. Most of the reviews I’ve read name it the greatest war film. Since unlike most there is no glory, only unending horror and pain.