Sudba cheloveka (1959) Reviews

• a groundbreaking Soviet film about World War II

  sh_bronstein2009-04-01

  This movie is very special in many ways. It is a good movie in cinematic terms because it is aesthetically very impressive and has a good plot structure. On the other hand, this film touches subjects that were taboo in the Soviet Union of the time, and bravely shows parts of the history of the war that had not been part of public discourse at the time. It is also unusual because many Soviet films about WWII ended with an upbeat note, unlike this one. "Fate of a Man", as the title of the film translates, is a movie about a Soviet man (Sokolov) who experiences many of the horrors of the war against the Soviet Union. The movie tells his story in a flashback, showing how he is very broken after the war and what led to this. He had lost his family in the war, and had fought in it, he witnessed how his Jewish comrades were singled out and killed, and then he was taken to Germany to do forced labor. There, he suffered all sorts of abuse and barely survived. After the war ends, he goes back home, distressed and unable to find comfort for his emotional and physical pain. The film is very subtle in its depiction of the horrors of war, even though it does not white-wash what happened. As it was the first Soviet film to touch the subject of slave labor during the war, and of the murder of the Soviet Jews, it does this carefully, emphasizing the humanity of the victims of these cruel crimes without focusing on the gore. Together with "The Cranes are Flying" and "Ivan's Childhood" this is one of the first Soviet films about WWII that do not have a happy "we won"-type of ending. These three films were a form of dealing with the suppressed pain of Soviet citizens, after having lost one quarter of their population (27mio.) through the brutal attack by the Nazis. This movie is very impressive and very touching as well. I highly recommend it.

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• memorable Soviet war-drama

  info-1082000-06-01

  At first I thought this film would be the usual war film in total line with the politburo's view on The Great War. But after 15 minutes in the film, something changes. First we have a scene in which Sokolof (the main character played by director Bondarcuk)) comes home drunk - something I have never seen in an older Soviet movie, than the war breaks out and after a slightly over the top scene in which Sokolof says goodbye to his family all hell breaks loose. The scene where Sokolof drives his car filled with ammunition across the frontline is incredible, and this is only the beginning of the war. Although the story sometimes is quit melodramatic, the photography of the film is exceptional modern for a film made in 1959. In beautiful black and white the viewer witnesses the whole damn thing called war. The film is not as heartbreaking and in-your-face as Come And See by Klimov, but Klimov must have seen this film and used it as an inspiration. Russia lost 20 million people during the second world war (some because of Stalin) but what it meant for and how it changed the life of ordinary people is all to clear in this story. This man's fate as he calls it. Although the film, I suppose, is rare, see it if you ever have a chance.

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• The Nightmarish Saga of a Survivor

  claudio_carvalho2011-12-11

  After the Russian Civil War, the Russian worker Andrei Sokolov (Sergei Bondarchuk) marries his beloved Irina (Zinaida Kirienko) and seventeen years later, the couple has a son and two daughters. The family man Andrei is summoned by the Red Army as truck driver in the World War II and he promises to Irina that he will return to his family. Andrei drives through a road that is bombed and he is captured by the Germans and suffers in the prisoner camps. He finds strength to resist the maltreatment of the German soldiers thinking in Irina and his children. Andrei succeeds to escape from the Germans and finds that Irina and their daughters were killed during the bombing of their house and his son Anatoly is a Captain of the Russian Army. Near to the end of the war, Anatoly dies and Andrei does not see any motive to live. Until the day that she sees the starving orphan Vanja begging on the streets of Uryupinsk. "Sudba Cheloveka" is a magnificent Russian anti-war film with the nightmarish saga of a survivor of World War II. The narrative is perfect, with top-notch screenplay, direction, performances, cinematography and scenarios. The film gives the sensation of documentary and I am not sure whether the director Sergei Bondarchuk used in his debut inserted footages to give more realism to the movie. The sequence when Andrei meets the orphan boy is touching and never corny and closes this little masterpiece with golden key. My vote is nine. Title (Brazil):"O Destino de um Homem" ("The Destiny of a Man")

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• Soviet POW's Belatedly Rehabilitated

  jhrclbpmar2010-07-26

  The work is absolutely stunning visually, at times radical in its framing. It is perfectly understandable that since the film was made only 5 years after Stalin's death the political strictures under which it was made forced the director to be careful to avoid depicting the persecution suffered by returning Soviet POW's under his rule, but by focusing on the suffering they, and most particularly the protagonist, experienced as prisoners in German work camps and the steadfast and heroic endurance they maintained in the face of cruelty and hardship he is completely successful in politically rehabilitating them as patriots, both for their contemporaries and for Soviet posterity. A beautiful and at times quite moving film. Highly recommended.

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• The Presence of the Past

  ilpohirvonen2013-10-31

  Sergey Bondarchuk is probably best known for his epic spectacle "War and Peace" (1966), and his outstanding feature debut "The Destiny of Man" (1959) was made in the same tradition of the war genre, though not in a similarly big fashion. Like many other Soviet war films made during the cultural thaw in Eastern Europe caused by the spirit of Geneva such as "The Cranes Are Flying" (1957) and "Ballad of a Soldier" (1959), "The Destiny of Man" focuses on the human experience in the bleak misery of war. It tells the story of an ordinary man who lost everything during a war that meant nothing to him. The historical legacy and the poignantly present memory of the Second World War played an integral role in almost all of the Soviet films made during the cultural thaw. It is as though life itself was approached from this perspective. An entire generation was left alone with their problems to sink into oblivion in the era of Stalin's cult of personality. Not until the new political waves of the 1950's arrived were these people dealt properly in cinema. "The Destiny of Man" cuts right to the memory of WWII as it begins from the first spring after the war. A man recalls his experiences during the war and ponders why life has mistreated him so in a long flashback. Bondarchuk's mobile camera fluently shifts to the past -- the memory -- revealing its reality before our eyes. His style is very modern, as is the case with other films from this period, born from dynamic movement, montage and intensity of close-ups. Accompanied by an astonishing soundtrack with nearly surreal tones and a great score by Venyamin Basner, this poetic voyage to the days gone by touches our very core. The film was made in the same year with Masaki Kobayashi's masterful trilogy "The Human Condition" (1959-1962) which also highlights the experience and moral disappointment of an individual in times of immeasurable brutality. "The Destiny of Man" also includes a sequence taking place in a POW camp where the prisoners are forced to work, thus inevitably triggering an association with the first part of Kobayashi's trilogy. A perceptive spectator (or an obsessive fan of Kobayashi) might even observe a shot bearing a striking resemblance to the iconic image of workers walking up the hill. What makes "The Destiny of Man" to stand the test of time and lifts it up to the same level with "The Cranes Are Flying" and "Ballad of a Soldier" is its profoundness. It is not a profoundness achieved simply by story, but by form. This can be seen in the film's aesthetics which is tremendously rich of tone and meaning. Bondarchuk truly achieves to depict the complexity of human experience and historical conditions. The cinematic repertoire of the image, the scenes and even entire sequences extends from the brief vibrations of the dramatic surface to the aesthetic profoundness of human existence.

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