Film: Wars Near and Far

IF the Academy Awards made any kind of sense-which, of course, they don’t-the foreign-language Oscar would have gone not to the insipid Kolya, but to Russia’s powerful Prisoner of the Mountains. Based remotely on Tolstoy’s Prisoner of the Caucasus, this is an updating to events in today’s Chechnya. Many movies pretend to be pacifist in intent, but as long as they show wars with winners and losers, they are lying. In a true anti-war film such as this, even the winners are in some ways losers.

This is the story of two Russian soldiers captured by the Chechens and held for ransom by the town patriarch, Abdul-Murat, who would exchange them for his son, held by the Russians. The two are Sasha, a sergeant and cynical veteran, and Vanya, a recruit and naive novice. Sasha begins with nothing but contempt for Vanya, refusing even to speak to him. But gradually the pair, often chained together, form human bonds as well. An exchange of prisoners fails, and the Chechens exert pressure on Abdul-Murat to kill his captives. He refuses, and urges them to write to their mothers to intercede. Meanwhile it is his 12-year-old but very mature daughter, Dina, who looks after the men, and soon Vanya is in love with her, even talking marriage. Up to a point, she reciprocates.

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John Simon

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IF the Academy Awards made any kind of sense-which, of course, they don’t-the foreign-language Oscar would have gone not to the insipid Kolya, but to Russia’s powerful Prisoner of the Mountains. Based remotely on Tolstoy’s Prisoner of the Caucasus, this is an updating to events in today’s Chechnya. Many movies pretend to be pacifist in intent, but as long as they show wars with winners and losers, they are lying. In a true anti-war film such as this, even the winners are in some ways losers.

This is the story of two Russian soldiers captured by the Chechens and held for ransom by the town patriarch, Abdul-Murat, who would exchange them for his son, held by the Russians. The two are Sasha, a sergeant and cynical veteran, and Vanya, a recruit and naive novice. Sasha begins with nothing but contempt for Vanya, refusing even to speak to him. But gradually the pair, often chained together, form human bonds as well. An exchange of prisoners fails, and the Chechens exert pressure on Abdul-Murat to kill his captives. He refuses, and urges them to write to their mothers to intercede. Meanwhile it is his 12-year-old but very mature daughter, Dina, who looks after the men, and soon Vanya is in love with her, even talking marriage. Up to a point, she reciprocates.