Larisa Shepitko with cinematographer Vladimir Chukhnov
THE ASCENT (Voskhozhdeniye) A
Russia (111 mi) 1976
d: Larisa Shepitko
Shepitko, who died in a car accident a few years after
making this film, is the wife of Russian filmmaker Elem Klimov, who directed the
more commercially known film Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1984), generally regarded the most graphically
realistic war film ever, bar none, notable for its searing poetic intensity,
but perhaps lacks the inner complexity of this even greater Russian film,
arguably the best Soviet era war film ever made that examines not just the
graphic outer horrors, but Shepitko finds truly inspiring images focusing on
individuals or small groups of characters that reflect the absolute insanity
taking place inside these human beings, the ending of which is simply
awe-inspiring. Set in Belarus, bullets
are flying and bodies are dying in a gun skirmish over the opening credits,
where the intensity of the film never lets up throughout the duration, focusing
on grim faces, worn out soldiers with next to nothing to eat, a terrified
population under occupation, starving children with petrified mothers, all cast
in an immense landscape of endless white snow.
Like The
Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli) (1957), this features a Russian army in
retreat, a traumatizing shock early in the war when they were nearly wiped
out. The Russian countryside has been
overrun by German Nazi’s who are terrorizing the citizens, stealing what food
they have, forcing them under duress to become their informant eyes and
ears. What Russian soldiers are left
hide under cover of forests, but are forced to send food expeditions out to
neighboring farms. This film follows two
soldiers that from the outset are on a near impossible mission, as there’s
little food left anywhere in the dead of winter. One is healthy and fit, Vladimir Gostyukhin
as Rybak, while the other, Boris Plotnikov as Sotnikov, is slowed down by a
tubercular sounding cough and eventually a bullet in his leg that nearly leaves
him for dead, but his partner heroically rescues him. As they step through knee deep snow drifts,
crawling at some points with insufficient protection against the harsh
elements, like so many other Russian films, nature itself becomes their
toughest foe.
Everything is reduced to a matter of survival. When they reach their destination, the farm
has been demolished and left in a state of rubble, pushing forward into German
occupied territory where the next farm is manned by an elderly Soviet
collaborator who fears Nazi retribution.
The partisan soldiers think him a coward but move on, where they are
eventually captured and brought to a Nazi camp in a nearby town and held as
prisoners, along with a proud and protective mother (Lyudmila Polyakova) who
helped hide them. Tarkovsky stalwart
Anatoliy Solonitsyn appears as Portnov the interrogator, a Russian teacher from
a nearby academy turned Nazi sympathizer.
Russians torturing and executing fellow Russians is the depth of war
depravity and Solonitsyn is brilliant in a despicable role he’s perfectly
suited for. From what we can see, as
Nazi officers chat jovially in close proximity to one another, he is an
outsider even among this group, seen instead as a kind of gruesome
black-cloaked undertaker who routinely sends men to their graves. The audience is not spared from witnessing
acts of torture to Sotnikov, who offers nothing but contempt, while Rybak
speaks freely, hoping to save his life, but both are condemned to die, though
Rybak is offered a chance to serve the German Reich as a police agent. The mother, the elderly collaborator, and a
child are added to this group, spending one last night together alive where
together they discuss the merits of a soldier’s mission, of being a patriot, a
mother, a coward, or a collaborator.
Each seems individually driven by a desperate need to survive, but
Sotnikov offers himself as a selfless example, attempting to confess his guilt
to spare the others, where the aptly chosen title reflects his (and his
nation’s) spiritual redemption.
By the next morning, Portnov seems mildly amused, mocking
them at their sudden willingness to talk, but spares no one except Rybak, who
changes sides to keep his life, rationalizing in his thoughts that if he’s
alive, at least he has a chance to escape.
But there is no escape—not from this torment. What happens is shown with exquisite delicacy
and poetic grace, an elegy, a remembrance of the dead, as we witness the
treachery of war without a single shot being fired, as the execution by hanging
is turned into a public spectacle, where the villagers at the point of a gun
are forced to witness. The pace and
harrowing interior intensity of this film is relentless, as there is never a
moment without impending menace, gorgeously shot by Vladimir Chukhnov (who died
in the same tragic car accident as Shepitko), featuring perfectly composed
landscapes and plenty of camera movement, much of it at close range showing the
visceral physicality of exhaustive effort, such as the single extended take of
Rybak’s rescue of Sotnikov, breath by breath, foot by foot, literally dragging
him through the snow, but also using portraitures, especially that of a fierce
young boy at the end who eyes the condemned men, the next generation making a
surreal sympathetic connection without any words being spoken, accentuated by
the psychologically horrific music of Alfred Shnittke which resembles the
transcendent yet furiously disturbing monolith music from Kubrick’s 2001: A
SPACE ODYSSEY (1968). The sound design
of this film is highly advanced and uniquely modern, where the use of offscreen
sound continually exposes the raw nerves of each moment, dogs barking, wind
blowing, bullets firing, nearby Nazi’s chattering in untranslated German or
laughing sadistically at their helplessness, which only ratchets up the hideous
tension to insane heights. In many ways
resembling Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), utter insanity is
exposed here, the relentless realization that you have no choice, yet you are
forced to make one anyway. The
nightmarish inner thoughts at the end are expressed wordlessly, where the
nobility of the dead speaks volumes, where voices continue to reverberate
inside the heads of the living like an explosion of neverending echoes, yet
only silence fills the crisp wintry air with a mournful reverence and a
profound sense of loss.
