1941--it was a very bad year for oppressed peoples: Germans gassed Jews and Russians sent Lithuanians off to Siberia to be worked to death. This is a story of guards and captives in such a labor camp, sensitively focusing on a select few individuals and their particular conflicts and understandings, distinguishing it from yet another concentration camp horror. Not to say the viewer is spared the extremity of brutality, only that characters' actions are presented in the larger contexts of their personas as they were before being brought together in their current circumstances, for a fuller understanding of what they do, and what they will do. Script, acting, camera work, everything high quality.
Beautifully bleak.
Beautifully bleak.