"1944" - Estonian filmmaker's complex look at a supposedly simple war
I knew going in that 1944, Estonia’s entry into this year’s Chicago European Union Film Festival, was going to be a difficult film.
Both in the West and in Russia, we like to think of World War II as the one “good” war, with people of the world facing off against the great, genocidal evil. Growing up, I certainly heard plenty about Russians and other people that made up the Soviet Union fighting back against the Nazi scourge, stopping it in its tracks and eventually taking back the country and liberating Eastern Europe.
But while there are truths in that, it also ignores some uncomfortable shades of grey. Talk to the Polish immigrants who live in Chicago and the suburbs, and you’ll find out exactly what they think of what the Red Army did.
As far as they were concerned, it wasn’t liberation - it was trading one brutal occupation for another.
Just yesterday, I had a Russian ask me whether I was “one of those people” who thought we’d be better off if Hitler succeeded. It was hard to resist the urge to tell him to go fuck himself right then and there. As anyone who read this Livejournal, or follow me on any other social media, should know by now, for me, World War II isn't just another piece of history. It’s something that directly affected my family and the city I still call my home (even if it’s not the city I’m living in). But if, say, a Westerner who didn’t know any better asked me that, I would have said that, no, we wouldn’t be. One only needs to look to what happened to my people - and, in this context, I mean all the people that contributed to my genome (Russians, Poles, Belarusians and Jews) on the territories Nazis did occupy. I’ve said it before, but it’s worth reiterating - to Nazis, my people were, at best, source of slave labor and, at worst, something to be exterminated. But at the same time…. I have to acknowledge that the Poles I talked to weren’t completely off-base, either.
As 1944 explains right in the introduction, during World War II, thousands of Estonian men were conscripted into Nazi military’s foreign units, while thousands of others were conscripted into Red Army. As part of the 1939 pact between Nazi Germany and USSR, Estonia was one of the countries that the Red Army took over. And when Nazis invaded Soviet Union, Estonia was one of the places that got invaded.
For the soldiers fighting on either side who just wanted to see their homeland free and independent… My people (and, in this case, I mean the Russians) have an expression - куда не кинь, всё клин. No option is really a good option.
1944 follows the two Estonian soldiers - one fighting on the Soviet side, and one fighting for the Nazi side. Well, “for” might be a bit generous. The ones fighting in the Nazi side clearly have no love for Hitler, or Nazi ideology, nor do they have much faith that the Nazis will honor any promises of giving their country independence. The ones fighting on the Russian side don’t seem quite as weary, but they also have to be careful to watch themselves, for NKVD operatives threaten to brutally respond to anything that might even remotely smell of disloyalty.
Which is, interestingly, a thread that binds our two protagonists together. Without giving too much anyway, both of them were effected by Stalinist purges, one way or another. Which gave the movie another wrinkle I didn’t expect. As I just recently wrote, the purges have as much personal significance to me as the events of the Siege of Leningrad. Regardless of what side they were on, of course I would be inclined to emphasize with a young soldier whose entire family was sent to labor camps in Siberia (and, given what we learn of his father’s background, his father was probably executed).
1944 pulls no punches when it comes to depicting the horrors of warfare. Soldiers and civilians alike get killed brutally, messily and, in many cases, unexpectedly. Soldiers on both sides are crass, make very morbid jokes and mock their superiors. In the end, soldiers on both sides do pretty awful things, and both protagonists weren’t exceptions.
The movie shows most characters on both sides as living, breathing people who are capable of love and hate, who take care of each other and who are driven to extremes by desperation. 1944 doesn’t ask you to cheer for the characters all the time, or to approve of everything the protagonists do - but it does make you understand why they do what they do. And the movie is better off for it.
There were some things I quibbled with. Like, the fact that the one Russian character with a sizable speaking role who was shown to be flawed, but compassionate just happened to have some Estonian ancestry surely wasn’t a coincidence. And there were some other things about depictions of the Red Army and Soviet Union that I might take issue with (I say “might” because I don’t know a whole lot about what happened in Estonia during the war. For all I know, there’s at least some truth in that). But I would also be remiss not to mention that the movie introduces some wrinkles when it comes to relationships between Estonia and Russia. The movie doesn’t forget that, before it declared independence after the October Revolution, it was part of the Russian Empire for almost two hundred years. You see a character sharing a medal his father earned while fighting for the Russian Empire during World War I, and Russian influences crop up in some of the characters’ names. And I found it interesting that that the people the Nazi conscripts dread weren’t the Russians - they were specifically “the Reds” (of all ethnicities).
A lot of my quibbles took a back seat when… I don’t want to give too much away, but remember what I said about the connecting thread? Ultimately, the movie’s biggest villain, if there is any, is the long shadow cast by Stalin’s purges. Not just the way they cost thousands of lives and damaged millions more, but the way fear for personal safety can twist a person’s soul.
[Spoiler (click to open)]I have long wondered - what would happen if I ever ran into any of the people who shot my great-grandfather, or sent my great-grandmother to labor camps, or tortured Grandpa Roma and Grandpa Slava. Watching this movie… If they were anything like Juri, I think I would forgive them. What they did would still be on their hands, but, in a way, they were as much victims of Stalin-ordered atrocities as members of my family were.
Like I said earlier - a lot of times, 1944 is a hard to watch. And I come in it with biases and baggage I couldn’t even pretend to ignore if I tried. But if you are an American, or a Westerner in general, I think you would appreciate a story that avoids easy answers and simple conflicts. It’s a movie that is, ultimately, about humanity, and how much humanity anyone hopes to retain when facing a difficult chose. It’s a powerful film.
Now, if you are Russian living in Russia… I would like to believe that, back in the late 1980s or the 1990s, it would have been possible to at least have a discussion about it. But in this post-Maidan, post Crimean annexation world, when the United Russia apparatus ramps up patriotism and clamps down on anything that doesn’t fit the party line, anything that even remotely suggests that the Red Army wasn’t always squicky-clean would be tantamount to treason. I wouldn’t be surprised if the state media already denounced it as “anti-Russian xenophobia.”
Which is a shame, because it is a good movie. One that isn’t easy to watch, but it’s a good movie.
And maybe someday, we’ll return to the point where more of my fellow Russians would have a chance to see it and judge it for themselves.
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