To start with the most important thing: this movie is pure early soviet propaganda; putting the enemies of the state in a bad light and highlighting the bolshevik's achievements. With that said, I don't want to judge this movie on the political correctness of it's message, but purely on if it's good as a movie.
A slow and rather abstract start points out one problem; it's hard to put the pieces of the storyline together without prior knowledge about the Kiev Arsenal Uprising. With basic knowledge of the history of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union you might think it's a movie glorifying the revolution that brought Lenin into power. A side-note is that silent movies are probably not the best vehicle to tell a story that requires a lot of explanation.
The minimalist start slowly picks up (as did the score from 2015) when the train literally starts moving. The train crash and the moments leading up to it resemble earlier cinema's slapstick, especially in contrast to the start of the movie.
This is where the movie draws the viewer in more, with innovative direction and use of light, and beautiful cinematography. Many scenes seem way ahead of their time.
A 7 out of 10 is the maximum I feel I can give this movie though, mostly because of it's sloppy editing. You would think that with the care Dovzhenko put into directing this film, he would take even more care with the editing and polishing it up before releasing. Even though Arsenal also has moments where the futility of war and the excessive, sometimes unnecessary violence is shown; maybe the sloppy editing is also a sign of the propaganda nature of this film. Furthermore one could argue that in some (or too many) scenes Dovzhenko tries to hard to be edgy and avant-garde, which seems to work counter-productive in the movie as a whole.
A slow and rather abstract start points out one problem; it's hard to put the pieces of the storyline together without prior knowledge about the Kiev Arsenal Uprising. With basic knowledge of the history of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union you might think it's a movie glorifying the revolution that brought Lenin into power. A side-note is that silent movies are probably not the best vehicle to tell a story that requires a lot of explanation.
The minimalist start slowly picks up (as did the score from 2015) when the train literally starts moving. The train crash and the moments leading up to it resemble earlier cinema's slapstick, especially in contrast to the start of the movie.
This is where the movie draws the viewer in more, with innovative direction and use of light, and beautiful cinematography. Many scenes seem way ahead of their time.
A 7 out of 10 is the maximum I feel I can give this movie though, mostly because of it's sloppy editing. You would think that with the care Dovzhenko put into directing this film, he would take even more care with the editing and polishing it up before releasing. Even though Arsenal also has moments where the futility of war and the excessive, sometimes unnecessary violence is shown; maybe the sloppy editing is also a sign of the propaganda nature of this film. Furthermore one could argue that in some (or too many) scenes Dovzhenko tries to hard to be edgy and avant-garde, which seems to work counter-productive in the movie as a whole.