PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Red-125 The Russian film Komissar was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Commissar (1967). It was co-written and directed by Aleksandr Askoldov. This film wasn't released until 1988, 21 years after it was produced. Not only were we deprived of the film, but Aleksandr Askoldov, the director, was never permitted to direct a movie again. The explanation for this delay, and this punishment, was that "the film depicted the Red Army in a negative way." That sounds realistic enough, until you see the movie. To me, the Red Army was depicted in a heroic fashion. There must have been subtle offenses, not clear to a non-Russian.The movie is set in Ukraine, where the Red and White armies clashed in the Russian Civil War. Nonna Mordyukova portrays Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army commissar, who is fighting against the Whites in the post-revolutionary war. She becomes pregnant, and is billeted with a Jewish family during her pregnancy. Anti-Semitism lies just below the surface of the entire film. Both the Reds and the Whites were guilty of it, although I believe it was worse from the Whites at that time. We don't see actual pogroms during the movie. A synagogue is boarded up when the Whites take over the town, as are many houses. It wasn't clear to me whether these were all houses with Jewish families.However, there's a horrific scene with three of the Jewish children terrify their own sister. They tell her to "come up out of the cellars," and then they "shoot her" with their toy weapons. Obviously, they are playing out a scene that they've witnessed.The acting is outstanding throughout the film. Rolan Bykov plays the husband, Yefim. (It's interesting that Bykov himself was Jewish.) Raisa Nedashkovskaya plays Maria, Yefim's wife. Both Rykov and Nedashkovskaya are excellent actors. Yefim is a strange character--in some ways brave, and in some ways childish. He'd rather dance than work, and he'll break into song when one would least expect it. Maria, his wife, is a more traditional role. The only problem with the casting is that Nedashkovskaya is incredibly beautiful. That would work if she were a young, newly married wife. However, the couple live in poverty, with many children to care for. Beauty doesn't last long in situations like that. Realistically, Maria would be worn down and broken by that point in her life. In the movie, she's still youthful and radiant.The protagonist of the film, Klavdia Vavilova, is a loyal Communist and she is as brave and strong as any man in the movie. In fact, when she's having the baby, and she's told to push, she has a flashback to a moment when she and other soldiers are trying to push a heavy artillery caisson over a hill. As a mother, with a newborn child, she is torn between her baby and her duty to the Red Army. Nonna Mordyukova, who portrays Klavdia Vavilova, was a great Soviet actor. She is excellent in this role. She looks like a strong, tough Ukrainian woman, who would not be out of place in the Red cavalry. Director Askoldov could probably have chosen a young beauty for the role of Klavdia. Instead, he went with an actor with broad shoulders and strong features. Mordyukova inhabits the role, and the movie's greatness is due in large part to her work.We were very fortunate to see this film at Rochester's Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum. The Dryden owns an excellent 35mm print, and seeing it projected on the large screen was a wonderful experience. However, it will work almost as well on a small screen. The Commissar is available on DVD. Don't miss it!

vladislavmanoylo Many elements in this film are about getting closer to the story, and the characters. One of the earliest indications of this intent is the camera- it is very lively throughout the film, and one of the repeating motifs is of it coming closer to scene- first physically but then much closer than even that. The camera moves like a person in the scene, only one unafraid of proximity, and very early on we can even see the camera take the viewpoint of a character being pushed inside a building; but strangely that's still the second closest it comes to a character.During the childbirth scene in this movie, the camera is able to enter a metaphysical place as a metaphor for the main characters current experience- scenes of soldiers and horses. But the movie is just as much about the reality that was used as a metaphor as it was about the 'actual' events.The scope of the plot is incredibly small as it follows a single family and Klavdia over a few days. but through this very small scope the movie speaks about something much more- about the treatment of Jews, about war, and about the revolution.This movie gets very close to a few characters and creates an emotional bond between them and the audience. In a word, this movie is very human, creating scenes that are very warm and others that are very sad. And through these few character and events is capable of talking about much more.

kril10 It is understandable why Commissar was banned at its original 1967 release. Chronologically one of the latest films that can be classified as a "Thaw film," it takes the theme of the "individual over the collective" and extended it into dangerous, perhaps even un-Soviet territory. Despite deStalinization, the Soviet Union and its Communist ideals still stood—the collective was still to be seen positively, and the pure, militaristic attitude of the people was still important. By introducing Commissar Klavdia as an emotionless, militaristic "maiden" with male mannerisms at the beginning, and proceeding to reveal her personal, human side through her feminineness, pregnancy, and change of clothing as she was cared for by a Jewish family, the film interprets the Revolution as a "softening of Communist values." By changing Klavdia from the officer who ruthlessly sentenced a Red deserter to the tribunal at the beginning to being a scared, doubtful mother who seemed unsure of whether or not the new regime would bring "trams and success" when the idea was challenged by Yefim, Commissar, is questioning the validity of Leninism altogether! It becomes a defiance, not a "Thaw" reinterpretation, which is why it likely got banned. Another huge factor to its banning may have been the heavy sympathy for the Jewish faith that it evokes—anti-Semitism was prominent in the Soviet Union even after Stalin. Once it was released under Gorbachev however, the film was allowed to intrigue viewers with its whirling camera shots depicting Klavdia's flashbacks, and its interest in the effects of the Revolution on the psychology of children, by showing how messed up kids got under switching regimes. Understandably banned during its time, but it is a good film about the Revolution nonetheless.

MikeH111 Don't be tricked by the rating. This movie is wildly, unforgivably underrated on IMDb. To speak of its beauties would take me volumes. Suffice it to say: find it, if you can (it may be still available in good video stores, on VHS) and be enthralled by one-of-a-kind movie. As opposed to overrated 8+ 9+ c... like American Beauty or the Korean Oldboy and other movies full of either vapid pomposity or of guts and gore and blood and nonsense, Komissar is an extraordinarily beautiful and fluent meditation on human nature, war, religion, childhood, good and evil. Miss it at your own peril.10 out of 10