The Ascent

1977 Russian WWII movie

Rating: 16/20 (Dylan: 6/20)

Plot: Two Russian partisans leave their posse to travel through Nazi-peppered and brutal wintry conditions in order to find some food. They reach a village but discover it's been decimated. The one who sort of looks like Jesus is wounded, and the other helps him to a farm house. When German soldiers capture them there, they face their seemingly inevitable deaths in different ways, one with cowardice and selfishness and the other with dignity and bravery.

This is such a simple movie. There's nothing fancy, nothing much to look at, nothing spectacular about the dialogue or the story. However, it works as a powerful, if incomplete glimpse into the human soul. Told in stark black and white (actually, it seems almost entirely white at times), the film forces you to focus on the characters, so much that it almost feels like you're looking right through them. Without the shock and awe of a Saving Private Ryan, this manages to be more gripping and emotional. It's definitely a brutal couple hours. There's some Christian religious allusions here which makes it really interesting for a 1970s Soviet film. I'm baffled by the title. There is a literal ascent in the movie, but I'm not sure it's enough to have the movie named after it. The Plunge would have been a more appropriate title.