Alexander Nevsky

Saw Alexander Nevsky, a well-made historical epic. It originates from soviet Russia and if you look for it, there's fairly obvious and blatant propaganda. The plot follows the war between the Russians and the invading Germans. The Russians are lead by their noble prince Alexander who is so humble and down-to-earth that he spends most of his time hanging around a fishing village, repairing nets and helping bring in the haul. Very salt-of-the-earth, this guy.

In contrast, every other noble or upper-class character is blatantly evil. In the cities, the merchants demand that the Russians avoid war for that would be bad for business. The German army, meanwhile, spends a lot of time murdering babies and being blessed by a bishop of some kind who looks like the grim reaper. The Germans wear helmets which cover their entire heads, leaving only glaring little eye-slits to see out of. The Russians have open-faced helmets and concerned expressions. It's very unpleasantly nationalistic. In those simpler times, audience manipulation had not advanced to the sophisticated point it is at now and the clumsy slight-of-hand is sometimes visible. Sometimes the message is integrated into the story and it's fairly nice, but other times it's fairly tedious (there's a long subplot about a woman deciding which man to marry. She chooses "he who shows most valor in battle!" Gag.) The film hits the anti-Christian, anti-German, anti-nobility, pro-Russian thing over and over again, really hard.

Apart from the propaganda-spotting, there's two scenes which stick out to me: The first is a quick moment when Alexander is accepting the position of army-leader from the people. There's a shot of a woman in a frenzy of exaltation who is baring her teeth and bulging her eyes. She's very pretty and I think it's supposed to evoke something sexual and exciting but I was just kind of horrified. Anyway, the other scene is the money-shot of the film: the battle on the frozen lake. That was amazing. (It was so amazing, by the way, that Ralph Bakshi stole the sequence whole-sale for his film Wizards.) Eisenstein has an excellent eye for crowd choreography. His individual characters are good, but nothing to really write home about. His battle and crowd scenes are amazing. The film spends about half an hour on the battle and it's the best part of the film.

So, see this for the lake-battle and forgive it its obsession with earthy, real people and with how awesome it is to die in battle. Or don't. Y'know. Whatevs.