This is one of the most realistic war films ever made, and it's the more realistic for being shown and exposed from the point of view of a child, which enhances the impact and makes the realism with its constantly increasing chain reaction of shocks, more and more growing to unbearable self-tormenting horrors and abhorrence, the more almost unendurable, but you have to stay on and see it all thorugh to the end. It is to be noted, that he never uses his rifle until in the very end, and the only target of his ultimate fire is some images. But that final outburst opens the finale of the greatest sequence of the film.
You can't say too much about a film like this, words will never be enough, it is one of the greatest cinematographic experiences you'll ever have at the cinema, and although just one view of it all is enough for a lifetime, you will never be able to forget the details, and many sequences will recur in your mind, forcing you to consider this part of the war and its reality with no end to your shocked emotions and deeply disturbed indignation of an endless upset. It is very reminiscent of Tarkovsky, but it is better still than Tarkovsky, more realistic and more consistent in its absolute implementation. The Tarkovsky film that comes closest to this is his major masterpiece "Anton Rublev", which is equally consistent and overwhelming in its composition. But Elem Klimov and his writers go further, forcing the realism on their audience in constantly increasing crescendo in its horros, worse and more realistic than anything that Jerzy Kosinski wrote. This is a towering masterpiece of war films looming over all other war films, as it is a true story and almost more documentary than any realism could be for its unfathomable psychology in depicting a child's experience and reactions to all this.
You can't say too much about a film like this, words will never be enough, it is one of the greatest cinematographic experiences you'll ever have at the cinema, and although just one view of it all is enough for a lifetime, you will never be able to forget the details, and many sequences will recur in your mind, forcing you to consider this part of the war and its reality with no end to your shocked emotions and deeply disturbed indignation of an endless upset. It is very reminiscent of Tarkovsky, but it is better still than Tarkovsky, more realistic and more consistent in its absolute implementation. The Tarkovsky film that comes closest to this is his major masterpiece "Anton Rublev", which is equally consistent and overwhelming in its composition. But Elem Klimov and his writers go further, forcing the realism on their audience in constantly increasing crescendo in its horros, worse and more realistic than anything that Jerzy Kosinski wrote. This is a towering masterpiece of war films looming over all other war films, as it is a true story and almost more documentary than any realism could be for its unfathomable psychology in depicting a child's experience and reactions to all this.