Category Archives: History

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The Admiral aka Admiral (2008): Not a Russian Master & Commander but Anna Karenina meets the Russian Revolution

I am not sure how many people outside of Russia know Admiral Kolchak. I’m afraid not a great many. At least I did not know him. But not knowing this historical figure  may  lead to an odd situation. Either people  watch this movie for the wrong reasons and will be disappointed or they might not watch it at all. This would actually be a pity since The Admiral is a very sumptuous movie. Beautifully filmed and very gripping.

As stated in the title The Admiral is not a Russian Master & Commander. After the initial ten minutes of naval battle scenes there is no more fighting on ships. These initial ten minutes however are very gruesome and intense. After this sequence the movie starts to resemble Anna Karenina for many reasons. It is a beautiful tale of tragic adulterous love and full of portents, like the breaking glass at the ball in the beginning which reminded me of the accident scene in Anna Karenina. (By pure chance I have just very recently watched Anna Karenina,  that is why I realised how very similar they are with regards to the love story apart from the fact that this is a true story.)

The love story between Kolchak and Anna, who are both married when they meet,  is only one part of the movie. It  is interwoven with the part  that follows Admiral Kolchak.  1917 after he has  successfully fought the Germans at sea, the Russian Revolution strikes and changes everything for the aristocracy. Kolchak flees to Japan and returns after a few months to head the anti-Bolshevik white troops that were to fight the Red troops. This is the beginning of the Russian Civil War that we see in all its ugliness. If Kolchak had been succesful there would maybe never have been a Soviet Union. Well, he was not successful. In the end he is taken prisoner and sentenced. Anna, the woman he loves, follows him even though they would have let her go. Quite a sacrifice.

It is quite a fascinating story and I have a feeling I am not doing it justice here. If you are interested in history, and especially Russian history, you should watch it. If you like tragic love stories then you should watch it as well.

My only reservations regard the flow. There a quite a few breaks in the movie, it seems a bit disrupted at times.

Do not watch the trailer as it is highly misleading and gives the impression of a pure naval combat movie.

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Movies on Pearl Harbor: Pearl Harbor, Tora!Tora!Tora!, In Harm´s Way, From Here to Eternity

Any nation´s traumatic experiences have led to numerous attempts to capture the event in a movie. Pearl Harbor is no exception. There are a great many Pearl Harbor movies. Some are very well-known, others hardly at all. Some are very good, others rather not.

I would like to present four of those I have seen. Three of them are also romances, one is a pure war movie. Each and every one of them might very well get an extensive review in the future, but here, as teasers, four short glimpses at four special movies.

The one that generally everybody will immediately think of is the Jerry Bruckheimer production Pearl Harbor (2001) . The main theme is the love story of two men (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) with the same woman (Kate Beckinsale), a nurse. They are both fighter pilots and at the time when Pearl Harbor is attacked, they are stationed there. The movie starts slightly before the attack and ends shortly afterwards. It doesn’t try to show the other side. The Japanese are just plain bad. Period. As corny as this movie may be (although I think it works as a romance), it still shows an impressive re-enactment of the attack. For that and for a few exciting aviation scenes it is worth watching.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) is really different. This US/Japanese co production is an incredible attempt at showing both sides. And it does manage to do so. The Japanese are shown in all their tragic complexity and their fear, as Admiral Yamamoto states, that all they have done is to “awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”,  is quite moving. This is the best movie if you really want to get a feel for what was happening and why the involved parties acted and reacted like they did. It is filmed as well in  English as in Japanese which heightens the authenticity. A must-see. An eye-opener. A truly good movie.

Of course there had to be a Pearl Harbor movie with John Wayne in it. Otto Preminger´s In Harm´s Way (1963) starts just shortly before the attack, shows it from the perspective of a naval ship and later follows the main characters into battle in the Pacific. It is one of those black and white all-star casts that really works (Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Patricia Neal, Dana Andrews). The acting is superb. Pictures are nice, the background story, also a love story, is convincing, and the score is very good. An enjoyable watch. Not very heavy on history but still a good movie and a fine example of a film dedicated to this disastrous event.

Don´t we all know this picture? It is one of the most famous movie stills ever. From Here to Eternity (1953) is a movie I totally love. It is my favourite of the four, even though I must admit Tora! Tora! Tora! is way more informative. The story that is based on the novel of James Jones is  intense and dramatic.  The acting is fabulous. Go and try to find this nowadays.  From Here to Eternity is also an all-star cast, with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed. This movie is one of the very great classics, right up there with Casablanca. Yes, that’s what I think. A movie to watch and re-watch. It has won multiple Oscars. You can see Monty in one of his best roles ever. Pearl Harbor is not the movie´s main theme but it does end with the attack on Pearl Harbor. It tells the stories and love stories  of different army soldiers on the eve of the attack  and somehow seems to juxtapose the tales of the people, their sorrows and woes with this national catastrophe.

One thing is for sure, pick any of them and you will not regret it. Even Pearl Harbor is at least good  old escapist entertainment.

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9th Company aka 9 Rota (2005) or “No one has ever managed to conquer Afghanistan”

Many have called 9th Company a Russian Platoon. I think it would be more accurate to call it a mix of Full Metal Jacket and Hamburger Hill. I compare it with Full Metal Jacket because of the first part, that is taking place in the boot camp, and with Hamburger Hill because the second part is also based on a true infantry combat story that consisted of the holding of a hill. But be it as it may, it is easily understood what it means  that this movie deserves to be named among the very best of its kind: It is extremely good. And in some respects (e.g. character development, emotions) it is even better than the aforementioned.

We watch the 9th Company from their early days in boot camp in Uzbekistan until they are finally flown to Afghanistan. The boot camp part is one of the best I have ever seen. And its end, the night before they depart to Afghanistan, is unique. This scene shows the whole difference between this Russian movie and any American infantry combat movie I have ever seen. The soldiers show emotions, even those of fear and sadness and speak about them openly. They also talk about why they volunteered to go to Afghanistan and one of them, a painter says: “War is only life and death, nothing unneccessary”, meaning he thinks it is utterly beautiful. Of course he is immediately contradicted by others.

The long boot camp sequence and the following early days in Afghanistan are heavy and foreboding. It is a slow and effective build-up until the final intense combat part.

The 9th company was among the last to leave Afghanistan. Their last mission was to hold Hill 3234. A group of only 36 soldiers fought against the superior number of 400 Afghan rebels. We see many of those that we got to know and like during the movie get killed. There is a moment when those who survived go completely mental so that in the end they are victorious however highly decimated. But this battle is historical for other reasons as well. It was the last battle in the last war the crumbling Soviet union was ever to fight.

The key message is delivered early on, when the recruits learn about the culture and the land they are going to invade. The instructor who teaches them says literallay : “In all of history, no one has ever managed to conquer Afghanistan. No one. Ever”

The movie is gripping from beginning to end. And the characters are remarkably interesting. Even the instructor at the boot camp, an apparently mean and sadistic brute, is shown in all his complexity and we understand him in the end. What I liked best is the inside look at the Afghan terrain. I had a feeling to understand why nobody except those who lived there for centuries was ever capable of mastering this terrain. Those mountains with their tunnel systems are not unlike the Vietnamese  jungle. An abundance of hiding places; the enemy could be anywhere at any time.

This movie gets 5/5 stars. Watch it!

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The Brylcreem Boys (1998): A WWII Comedy, Drama and Romance in Ireland

The least I can say about this movie is that it is total fun. I did certainly never expect to laugh during a POW movie but that actually happened repeatedly. Admittedly it is not the most refined humor, it’s rather of the burlesque, slapstick kind. But it is never overdone. The movie is just sprinkled with it here and there. The overall tone is often quite serious. Still it is one of the very rare movies you could probably watch with  children (although planes and people get shot down at the beginning and there is some fist fighting as well).

Ireland having lost many of its young men during the Civil War had decided to stay strictly neutral during WWII. This was not much appreciated by the allies. Unlike Switzerland Ireland insisted that every soldier encountered on Irish soil was to be taken prisoner. What was not universally known however was the fact that they put all the prisoners, French, British, American, Canadian and German into the same camp.

The Brylcreem Boys is not based on a true story but on true facts that have been carefully assembled and put together to tell a convincing story. Two fighter pilots, the Canadian Miles Keogh  (Bill Campbell) and the German Rudolph von Stegenbeck (Angus Macfadyen),  shoot each other down over Ireland and are both taken prisoners and brought to the same camp. While on leave they  fall in love with the same girl, the strong-willed Mattie (Jean Butler),  which adds a bit of romance to the whole story. Their rivalry and mutual dislike is very intense in the beginning but over the course of the movie and during many incidents they realize that they are not that different despite being on different sides.

Much of the funny elements of the movie stem from contrasting the Germans and their rigid discipline and total lack of sense of humour with the  more easy-going other prisoners. (Unfortunately there aren’t any German actors in the movie and some of the accents that the cast adopted are a bit laughable.)

Even though they are far away from the war itself, one of the prisoners sort of brings it back with him when he returns from London from his futile attempt at escaping the camp.  His account from his stay in the British capital makes the tragedy of the constant bombing during the Blitz  utterly palpable.

I am a big fan of the Irish actor Gabriel Byrne whose character is the commanding officer of the camp. He also co-produced this movie. Seeing how much fun he exudes playing this role one can easily assume that this was a movie that was very close to his heart.

I am very glad the directors felt compelled to tell this story of this quite exotic camp. It provides an interesting insight into Irish history for which I am glad.

Since this is really a feel good movie but far from being stupid entertainment you might really  enjoy watching it.

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All The King´s Men (1999): The Company That Was Said To Have Been Swallowed by a Cloud

Whatever happened to Sandringham company at Gallipoli in 1915?

Were they really swallowed up by a giant cloud? Was there really a mist so dense that they could have disappeared in it? Did angels lead them to more heavenly grounds? Many tales like these are reported from many a battle field. Angels descending, mists forming, whatever not.

This is a true story. The Sandringham company did disappear. One of the versions that is  told in  All The King´s Men of the vanishing of over a hundred men is quite spooky. It has been for a very long time the preferred version and was definitely the one that the king was meant to believe. I really do not want to spoil this movie for you and will therefore not even hint at the true explanation. It should suffice to say that it was far more tragic than miraculous.

Sandringahm was one of the residences the Royal Family liked to stay at in summer. The 150 men that formed the company were headed by the king´s  Estate Manager Capt. Beck. They were servants, grooms and gardeners. The idyllic setting of Sandringham was referred to as paradise. What a stark contrast to the burning hot plains of Turkey.

The moment the company sets foot on Turkish ground it is obvious what an ill-fated campaign this is. The maps are wrong, the terrain is too hard to handle, the enemy has been totally underestimated. With hindsight historians say that Gallipoli was one of the most futile battles of WWI that was full of senseless battles.

WWI cost over 1 million of British and Commonwealth soldier´s lives. Half of them never got a proper grave. Compared to that the disappearance of some 150 men seems little. But to the estate and the little village who lost all their young men in one moment this was a catastrophe.

The BBC has done a good job with this movie. The actors, in particular David Jason and Maggie Smith, are excellent. The first parts achieve to create a very spooky atmosphere that only vanishes when the true reasons are revealed.