Our Own (2004)

I saw this movie last night. It is Russian-made and in Russian. The movie itself was pretty boring, but some aspects of it were really interesting. It is about 3 Russian Red Army soldiers (a commander, a Jew and a regular recruit) who escape from German captivity during the Second World War (called the 2nd Great Patriotic War in Russian.) They hide out in the small, farming town of the recruit.

The reason I say the movie has some interesting parts is because it is the first Russian/Soviet-made movie about the war that isn't all propaganda. All the ones I have seen before this one showed only the glories of the war and how everyone was willing to fight and die for Stalin, the Communist Party and the Russian motherland. There was always a scene of soldiers or civilians praising one or all of them and then there would be music and dancing.

This movie showed Russian collaborators (although they were only farmers and pretty stupid in the film) and even explained that many people viewed the Nazis as liberators from the Soviet, Communist dictatorship - which is something the Soviet secret police (the NKVD) investigated after the war. On a side note: up until the collapse of the USSR people had to fill out forms about what they did during the war and those that lived under German occupation were investigated even more.

The film also talks briefly about the kulaks. The kulaks were, according to the Soviet Communist Party, rich peasants. A person could be labeled a kulak by owning a cow, wearing glasses or being able to read. The kulaks were rounded up and deported to Siberia where the majority died along the way.

One more interesting thing from the movie was that they specifically mentioned the Germans murdering Jews, gypsies and "cripples." Usually the Holocaust is not mentioned and the victims are simply described as "Soviet citizens" on monuments and memorials throughout the former USSR. When I went to Babi Yar in Kiev there was one memorial that was made during Soviet times that describes the victims of the massacre as Soviets (there is another memorial on the actual site that mentions the Jews murdered there, but that was built years after the Soviet Union collapsed.)

Like I said the movie itself was pretty boring, but it did mention certain topics that I have never seen in a Russian/Soviet film about World War 2.