Celluloid Comrades

Took a break from writing this evening to reacquaint myself with some fine slices of Russian and Soviet cinema. First up on the double bill and pictured above was Traktoristi (The Tractor Drivers), a 1939 musical comedy in which a tank crewman - fresh from skirmishing against Japanese troops in the Far East - travels to Ukraine to try and seduce Marina, a particularly heroic labourer on a collective farm. Marina, however, already has a legion of admirers and won't be easily won. (It isn't the most cutting edge humour to a 21st century Western eye, but it's important to bear in mind that when Stalin was in power, not being executed was about as chuckleworthy as life got.)

Next up, 9-ya Rota (9th Company), Russia's Full Metal Jacket take on the true story of a group of Soviet paratroopers struggling to hold a mountain pass against the mujaheddin in Afghanistan in 1988. I last watched it a couple of years ago, and it hasn't lost its bite; plenty of thinly-veiled allegories to present day Western involvement in that region, as well as reflections on the futility of soldiers fighting in a nation they knew little about, and dying for one that ceased to exist within a couple of years. And there's plenty of explosions, and not a tractor in sight.