Balled of a Soldier

Most war films are slogans and lies. The Russian Balled of a Soldier, is honest and open-eyed. It changes some of the most threadbare cliches about people in wartime into miracles of sharp, shy observation.

Ballad is about a young soldier, Alyosha (Vladimir Ivashov), who becomes a hero almost by accident, and is given leave to visit his mother. On his way home on the chaotic Russian railroads he helps an amputee who is ashamed to return to his wife, delivers some soap to another soldier's unfaithful wife, and meets Shura (Shanna Prokhorenko), a girl who stows away in the beggage car he is riding in. Shura tells him that she already has a sweetheart, and after their adventures together confesses that this was a lie. They part, and Alyosha realizes too late that he loves her. Further delayed by the bombing of another train, he finally arrives home with only enough time to spend a few seconds with his mother before he must hurry back to the front and--as the narrator has already told us--death.

Alyosha is very nearly a stock hero. Certainly he possesses all the deadly virtues. But Ivashov plays the role gently, with humor (shrewdly bribing an officiously corrupt train guard, telling white lies to the father of the soldier whose wife is unfaithful), and humanity (when as last he meets his mother they squander their moment together in awkward small talk); he is convincing. Shura's part is acted with purity and directness. This young Russian actress has a face so lovely that I didn't even resent Alyosha's soppy flashback memories of it.

The entire encounter--the story of a soldier and the nice girl he has almost picked up--is told quietly and with complete candor.

Everywhere, director Grigori Chukrai presents the faces and machines of a people at war with truth and with power. Part of the power is gained through a considerable sacrifice in subtlety. All the characters in the film are like figures on a poster: you know almost everything about them at first sight.

Posed, rhetorical scenes add to this poster effect, although nowhere does the rhetoric stop us from seeing: faces listen as a loudspeaker intones news of defeats, and statue mourners stand stiffly around the bodies of the dead in a train wreck.

But most important is the intelligent and curious camera work: In a beautiful shot, the camera lingers on, showing the amputee and his wife slowly walking out of sight along a station platform; this has a sadness and individuality to its typical of the best movements in this remarkable movie.

Hard as it is to believe, when irony has become the cheapest of cinema gimmicks, the film contains no irony at all. There is plenty of patriotism and sentiment, but no posture. Its script is simple, and I am told the subtitles are adequate.

It am also told that one of the films the United States has sent in exchange for Balled of a Soldier is The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.