Brilliant. One of the most masterful of war films I have ever seen. The Russians have a singular flair and talent for war films–I mean this black and white, grainy dramas where humanity is thrown back upon itself. In the unrelenting bleakness of the Russian front, everything is stripped to its bare essentials. Food. Survival. Illness. Health. Loyalty. Betrayal.
[spoiler alert!] The Ascent follows two Russian soldiers, Rybak and Sotnikov, as they search for food for the rest of their squadron. We discover that Rybak is the hardy type and Sotnikov is weaker. Rybak is instinctual, he knows how to survive. Sotnikov was a former math teacher, an intellectual; he tends to waver. You’d put odds on Rybak surviving.
Sotnikov gets shot and Rybak carries him to a nearby village, where they hide with a woman and her three children, until they are discovered by the Germans and both soldiers, along with the woman, are taken away. When they are being hauled off, we get a shot of the face of the sick and already feverish Sotnikov–and then the camera pans up slightly, until you only see half of Sotnikov’s face–a beautiful composition which reminds me of a haunting James Nachtwey photo where there is also half a face there. The eyes peek out from the bottom of the frame, so that you get the full (moral-ethical) force of the gaze while still seeing a huge chunk of the context, of the surroundings–some charred, bombed out, bleak war front–and that’s the killer combination, isn’t it?
I really love this shot, and you can see it below. After a short pause, the camera pulls focus and puts the countryside in focus. This happens several times in the film–you get shots of the countryside, the motherland, and even once, at the end, the camera moves forward in a fashion that the eyes could not–it is not so much the gaze of the character (unless they have bionic eyes), but the yearning of the heart.
Both soldiers are taken in for questioning by the investigator, a Russian collaborator. This guy is so naturally creepy it makes me wonder why films these days need special kinds of lighting or effects. It’s all in the casting. Get a truly creepy guy to play the part and you’re set. In this scene, Sotnikov, the one who seems closest to death and therefore most likely to strike a deal, ends being the one defying his investigator. They have a marvelous dialogue on this: the investigator takes the position that we are mortal beings, and nothing matters more than survival. Conscience, soul, loyalty to the motherland–”where are these things”, he asks Sotnikov, his hand sweeping an arc in the air. When faced with life or death, he suggests, all that was once solid melts into air. Noble ideas are jettisoned. He knows what human nature is really like, he tells Sotnikov.
Rybak is given much better treatment, and even offered the possibility of a job as part of the police: that is, he is offered a job as an informer. He goes back to the cell, where he finds Sotnikov, who has been tortured and even branded. Rybak tells him what happened and says that he is going to play with the Germans, let them think he might cooperate, just so that they can survive another day. Sotnikov rejects this idea, saying that even such “playing” would be a betrayal of conscience. Rybak points out that if they are talking about conscience, well, what about your conscience when you got that woman in trouble for hiding us? And this is true–she was dragged away from her three helpless children because of them–and of course this wouldn’t have happened if Sotnikov had not been slow and gotten shot in the leg, and it might not have happened if Rybak had just left him there for dead. Of course, this is a debate that leads nowhere: they are both still trapped, and Sotnikov is deathly ill, which means, a la Chinese film, that he starts coughing blood, onto Rybak’s face in a bit of foreshadowing:
It’s also quite a touching moment…you really sympathize with Rybak. He might have some strategems for working the Germans or even escaping but he’s a got a real liability in Sotnikov.
In the final hours of their lives, Sotnikov looks increasingly pale and Jesus-like. Many shots of his face have that Jesus-glow about them. The next morning they are taken out for “liquidation”, as the German officer who opens the door cheerily says. Sotnikov ends up, despite his condition, being the most brave–because unlike the others, who still cling to the hope that they can survive and somehow escape, Sotnikov has decided to become a martyr. He tries to get the others freed but to no avail. Seeing this, Rybak decides to beg for a chance to become an informant–and this time you don’t get the sense that he is “playing”–but that he has, as the investigator would say, shown us something about the reality of human nature.
They are all taken to the gallows, even the little girl who was just caught because someone else hid her (and she might be Jewish) is not spared. The gaze of children is quite interesting in this movie. It reminds me of Their Eyes Were Watching Us and other such films, where its the gaze of children, either at the drama of the adults happening offscreen or their direct stare into the camera and at the audience. It doesn’t happen too often in The Ascent, and this is one of the times–at first the girl is looking left and right, as if this were some great nightmare and some deus ex machina type thing is going to come save her. But she realizes, as the noose is put around her neck, that death is inevitable. And that is when she looks at the camera, challenging the audience, asking us if how we let this happen, or whether or not we are aware that the heart of darkness–social evil–still lurks inside the heart of civilized Europe and the West. Were it to explode again, as it did in WWII, where would we stand?
In the last scene, we see tight close-up of Sobitkov as he hangs in the air, waiting for death. You have Rybak at his feet, crying. Now things are very Jesus-like. Sobitkov sees a boy in the crowd and smiles (at him?) with his last breath. The boy is wearing a hat with a faded Red Star on it, and was crying. But seeing Sobitkov smile at his death, the boy manages to creak out a smile too. Scenes like this could very easily become hokey, but be that as it may, it is, if nothing else, proof to Sobitkov that he has not died in vain, and that the things that one dies for, all those noble concepts floating in the air, can be crystallized and solidified–in the face of that boy, or in that boy himself. The passing of the torch, the continuation of the struggle, the hope for the future. When the Russian turncoat interrogator sees Sobitkov smiling at his death, he flinches–and this is a very subtle flinch, and it seems the Germans around him, watching the scene with relish, don’t even notice. It’s as if doubt has crept into that self-serving, nihilistic edifice of his. But it’s just a flash.
The last shot I want to mention is the last time that we see Rybak. The Germans treat him like a dog, and his own people treat him like a Judas. He tries to hang himself in the outhouse and fails. In this shot he sees an open, unguarded door. He has played this scene out in his mind several times–running, attempting escape, and then getting used as target practice by the Germans and, of course, getting shot and therefore killed.
Here the camera, instead of just zooming or pulling focus, moves forward, through the gates, towards Russia, towards the grainy villages and snow-covered dirt roads you can barely see in the distance. At first you think that Rybak has finally grown a pair and we are seeing his attempt at escape in the first person. At this point you don’t even care if he dies in the process, since it was clear that he wanted to die anyway. However, it’s not clear what it is. That’s where the movie ends. I don’t think he has left. I think his heart has flown out there, but his body is stuck, working for the Germans. And what a strange path it was to here: he was the original patriot, the one sent to get food, the one who by saving Sobitkov got the woman in trouble, the one who, stumbling into the farmhouse of another collaborator, gets him in trouble too (they are also hanged in the last scene). Rybak is clearly not evil, despite the compromise that he made at the end to save his own hide. So when you see this Judas, kneeling on ground, crying out in pain, you kinda feel for him:
All in all, an excellent film. Director Larisa Shepitko died young, at the age of 39, in a car crash.
The Ascent was her last film.
