Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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!

Michael Neumann The biggest surprise about this little seen Soviet drama (revived in the late 1980s) isn't that it was banned for two decades, but that it was ever made at all. The film is openly critical of the Revolution, but not from behind the fancy metaphoric camouflage used in other repressed Iron Curtain features. Instead, it offers a direct and sensitive story of a dedicated but pregnant Red Army Commissar who, sometime during the 1930s, finds shelter with a Jewish family and is transformed by their affection. In the end she has to choose between motherhood and the Motherland, but her decision to follow military duty does nothing to diminish her new found sympathy for her surrogate family, and before rejoining her company (slogging through an unglamorous landscape of Ukrainian ice and mud) she entrusts her baby to the care of people (and, by extension, a tradition) she has learned to love. Stylistically, the film is a mix of poetic realism with occasionally self-conscious (but effective) montage flashbacks, plus one haunting flash-forward anticipating the Holocaust.

gentendo From staunch militant to sensitive mother, Vavilova's search for self-identity is one that creates meaningful stories, both internally and externally. She is a very curious character. With masculinity and devout patriotism as two of her defining qualities, she does not subscribe to the typical female persona (at least in the beginning).Each quality creates a thought provoking dynamic for how she faces internal and external wars. Her internal war is pregnancy. As the child grows within her poses a threat to her masculinity, a subsequent external war is created—that is, the child additionally poses a threat to her patriotic rank as Commissar. Although both wars throw her life into a state of imbalance, they also help develop her in becoming a more volitional and rounded character. In particular, her internal war creates maternity and sensitivity—two qualities that lacked in her previous commanding status.She acquires both qualities after giving birth; this is depicted when singing a lullaby to her sleeping babe as well as when emotionally breast-feeding him (two actions which run contrary to her initially bleak and cold persona). Her external war (i.e. love of country), so too created by the pregnancy, introduces the most difficult challenge she has to face in the film: the choice of whether to marry herself to her country by divorcing from her child, or keeping her child and ridding her patriotism.What draws her to eventually side with her country is a series of haunting flashbacks and clairvoyant visions. In one specific moment while suffering through the birthing process, her mind flashes to a dreary landscape filled with military soldiers, who, like herself, struggle to push a heavy piece of artillery up the side of a steep and sandy hill. This image evokes at least one particular meaning—one which acts like a stepping stone to help Vavilova make her final decision when giving up her child: The collective group pushing the machine uphill is a type of not only the communist ideals that Vavilova stands for, but is also a metaphor for the strenuous birthing process itself. In other words, the birth of a child and the birth of a nation are equally painstaking tasks—both which require exertion (i.e. masculinity) and loyalty (i.e. patriotism).The flashback ends with her waking up in panic, repeating to herself several times: "Stop torturing me." These words speak on multiple levels. In one sense, she is tired of being mentally tortured from the government that oppresses her with stringency. In another sense, she is tired of being physically tortured during the birthing process. Rich is the emotion and meaning of this flashback, and consequently it later leads to an extremely significant clairvoyant vision.During this vision she witnesses the forthcoming holocaust of WWII. She sees herself with child swaddled in arms, shuffling amongst a sheepish group of Jews as they wander to their death chambers. Reluctant to follow what she sees, it's as if she's asking herself while in vision, "Is this my fate?" Her subtexual obstinacy kicks in: "No, it can't be." She is the author of her choices and will not be subject to any deterministic beliefs. She feels she can change this outcome, but she must act now. However, the choice to act is a difficult one given her present circumstance. What choice does she make: raise her child or fight for her country? She cannot do both, for by focusing on one the other is inevitably sacrificed. Where, then, is optimism to be found in her utterly bleak and tortured world? The aesthetics of the film help contribute to this bleakness by the director's choice of shooting the story in black and white. Only in a world like Vavilova's are colors of the rainbow absent. The black and white look is a reflection of the coldness she feels inside, empty of any optimism. Interestingly enough, however, the Jews surrounding her in vision seem to be optimistic—they raise their arms in an almost dance-like ritual, knowing full well that death will soon embrace them all. She steps back nervously. Her body language has spoken. She remembers back on the corrupt youth that exist in her present—the ones who so ignorantly mimic their corrupted elders—and feels an obligation to save the youth, and particularly her own child from such corruption. Although most of this is more or less implied, I strongly believe that this extraction is highly plausible given her final decision.She does not abandon her child, though some may argue so. She leaves her child in the hands of a very nurturing family; ones who she could trust since they too had nurtured her during her period of birth and even rebirth. Holding the confidence that her child will be safely watched after, she returns to her former state of balance by joining the war effort. She has rediscovered her meaning, place and identity in life: she is a warrior. Her life cannot be lived in fairy tales, like Yefim suggested when turning the war into a theatrical play for his children. Her life must be lived in truth and in truth only. That is the film's predominant theme: Despite how ugly the truth of reality is—even during times of war and torture—it must be embraced and dealt with; not thrown to some fantasy that creates false optimism. By living in a fairytale, she potentially falls prey to becoming a victim of the holocaust; by living in truth, she attempts to reverse the effects of such an outcome by fighting the monster of war.

Dilip Barman I saw "Komissar" as part of a local Jewish Film Festival. It is a black and white film that focuses on a commander on the Red side of the Russian Civil War, Klavdia Vavilova, who finds herself pregnant with the baby's father dead in battle. Unable to continue the fight, she is thrust upon a poor Ukranian Jewish family, who are told to provide her lodging.The family takes her in (what choice do they have?) but soon their heart-felt sharing and kindness become obvious. When the Reds are retreating in a White advance, the danger is clear - were Klavdia found out by the Whites and identified as a Red komissar, the whole family could be executed. On the other hand, as the husband, Yefim Mahazannik, resignedly and clearly describes, the Jewish community can't expect good treatment from any Russian government at the time. In any case, the family asks her to stay, whether the village is under Red or White control.The story is stark, as can be expected from the setting. I enjoyed the performance of Raisa Nedashkovskaya, playing the role of the wife, Maria (isn't this much more a Catholic name than a Jewish one?). Her cheerfulness and kindness provide a welcome reprieve from the grimness of the film, as does, to some extent, her husband Yefim's incongruous singing. Even Maria and Yefim's children are forced to grow up quickly; I found disturbing their play-acting of the military harassing and killing Jewish people.I was surprised when the film ended; to me it was sudden and missing at least one or more final scenes. (I understand that the original 1967 film was actually not finished till the 1980s or 1990s. Apparently, the film was also banned in the former Soviet Union until Glasnost.) "Komissar" leaves one with silence and not hope for the Russian Jewish peasants and laborers, or any kind of vision of a peaceful and productive future for anybody.I did enjoy the skillfully subtle camera angles and landscapes. The actors gave strong and convincing performances. I also appreciated that the film could have justified being quite violent, but instead left most of the violence suggested and not graphic. Overall, I'd give the film a rating of 5 out of 10 - neither good nor bad, giving a good and perhaps realistic view into this period of history, but lacking a stronger plot.