Tell battalion that the next people in the bunker will be archaeologists
In August I mentioned that my lovely wife had bought me a couple of DVDs when she was over visiting her mother. Towards the bottom of here
I watched the first set, Tuntematon Sotilas, soon after and thoroughly enjoyed it. So with naff all on the box last night I intended to watch the first hour or so of Talvisota. At 191 minutes long I thought I would space it out over 3 evenings. The fact that the 'or so' part of 'first hour or so' extended to 'the whole three hours plus' tells you a lot about my feelings on the film. And this was my second viewing (I'd seen it a couple of years ago on line).
According to Wiki there were 3 main versions released. The international cinematic version (127 minutes), the one I saw (the original Finnish cinema version) and the extended TV series at a whopping 275 minutes.
The basic plot concerns a small sub-unit (don't they all?) of soldiers called-up in October 1939 ('for manouvres') and what happens to them over the succeding five months. Naturally, the bulk of it is the 100 days of the Winter War. As with all films of this genre, the sub-unit gets whittled down and you begin to wonder whether the main character Martti Hakala will cop a 'Bäumer'. I'm no WWII specialist so I don't know how realistic the action scenes are (if anyone has seen it and has a view I'd love to hear it). It seemed plausible to me (even if the Soviet tactics shown were mostly suicidal, which I understand they largely were).
One facet of this film that I appreciated were the little insights into what life was like then in Finland - still a mostly agrarian country. As with Tuntematon Sotilas, I found some of the 'homefront' scenes touching. We see a society where most people didn't have much, didn't expect much, but nevertheless felt that they had enough worth protecting - though that wasn't necessarily material. It seems almost as if there was a collective expression of "look our ancestors came to the most inhospitable part of Europe, hacked out a modest living out of unpromising material, kept ourselves to ourselves, and you lot still want to bother us and ask for more". Maybe that's just me with my biases.
We also see a society where Christianity still had a big influence culturally and socially. In one scene the singing of a Christmas Carol becomes an act of resistance. Probably like my grandparents generation here, they all knew the words.
Also much appreciated by this blogger is the deadpan Finnish humour, that goes with the no-nonsense approach to troubles. If you get the typical British wartime humour, you will like this. The sort of thing where a quip is made out of the corner of the mouth, with a fag* in the other side. The Russians are nearly always 'naapurit' ('the neighbours' - e.g. 'the neighbours are trying to move the garden fence again') when not 'Ryssät' (which I understand is a more perjorative than 'Russkies').
The special effects are pretty good on the whole, especially when the film was made in 1989 - it coincided with the 50th anniversary of the war. We're now approaching the 80th and that generation is nearly all gone. Although the Finns ended up on the 'other side' in 1941, I can only honour and admire their sacrifices in defending their homeland and freedoms**. Just as I would honour the poor bloody sods who were sent to take them away and suffered unimaginably in a frozen forest a long way from the steppe or from the warm valleys of the Caucasus.
I'll raise the mood a little now by reference to a song (or rather tune to a song) that got played a couple of times by one of the characters in the section. This was originally a hit in the 20s (I read somewhere it was the first 'pop' sensation in Finland) and there are many clips (from several countries) out there in the interweb of different versions (sometimes simply called "Emma" or "Oi muistatkos Emma?","Emma's Waltz", "Emma's Valssi", or "Finsk Vals" or variations of that - yeah I am obsessive.). All lovely because it's such a great melody. It's been a while since I inflicted any 'obscure Nordic music' on you, so here you go. And I'm sure many of you will appreciate singing along in your French farmhouses, so this one has helpfully got lyrics on screen. Or just take the missus for a waltz around the kitchen table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dpcVRW8DfI
* for clarity, this is British-English for 'cigarette' (and in such cases it nearly always is a 'fag' not a 'cigarette').
** For anyone so inclined to point it out, no I'm not ignoring the unacceptable things that happened in the Continnuation War....but to coin Basil Fawlty in 'the Germans' "Yes you did, you invaded [Finland]".
I once worked with a Finnish chap who'd been a teenage shoeless conscript at the end of the war , retreating most of the time. He had a funny view of the Soviet Union, he wasn't bothered about ww3 as he was convinced that an intercontinental missile made in the Soviet Union wouldn't work!
ReplyDeleteCheers Iain
Ha ha! That’s certainly an interesting angle to take.
ReplyDeleteOn realism of Talvisota. Depicted half-platoon is entirely fictious, but it's experiences and characters are based on real person's war memories, and battles are also real (The Battle of Taipale, Äyräpää). Weapons, gears, vehicles, used tactics and numerical amounts of forces are as realistic as possible, including Soviets' human wave attack doctrine. In the film biggest issue with realism comes from the fact that the winter 1988 when it was made was exceptionally warm, when actual Winter of 1939-40 was exceptionally cold. This is biggest issue with overall realism of the movie, but also something that the production couldn't control anyway. The battle scenery and landscapes are realistic as they are particularly picked to resemble as closely real historical sites by their geography as possible. Real T-26 tanks and replicas were used, but for airplanes they are remote-controlled scale models (for obvious reasons: no such airplanes exist anymore, or at least are free props for movies). Characters speak their natural provincial dialects where they are come from, and their speech also resemble their origin of social strata. Generally the cast of the film manage do great work without going prone for historical or linguistic anachronism in their acting. They collectively paint a picture and feeling of that era very well. Of course there are things with realism we could take under scrutiny, but overall the they are minor things in the big picture of the film, particularly considering the age of the movie and production values put to the film making. For example, at the end part of the movie, scenes set at Äyräpää bridgehead, realism of the movie transcends that far to the reality a war historians can actually track movements of real units with pretty high historical accuracy thanks to carefully chosen landscape for the scenes: when men of Nurmo make their failed attempt of counter attack in the movie, you can count almost exactly the real amount of died soldier on a snow from that scene. When parts of two soviet divisions make their human wave attack toward the river, they appear in the movie in several waves; just like in the historical reality. When the regimental commander ask from last standing fatigued 30-40 guys of a company can they hold their section of the line (against hordes of thousands of Soviets), that's pretty much how it was etc. etc.
ReplyDeletePekka Parikka's Talvisota doesn't have anything 'Hollywood Rambo' in it, not even in the scene where one man with sub-machinegun effectively sacrifice himself to stop the wave (something similar happened many many times in the reality).
The Winter War is one of the last war films to be found on a list of unrealistic war movies, and as such it stand there among the best ever made master pieces of it's genre.
"War has come to end 11am!"
Tervetuloa minun blogissa Tuntematon. Kiitoksia sinulle kommentteja. (I'm assuming you are Finnish). It's great to get the confirmation of the accuracy of the film.
DeleteAppropriately your comments came on the 80th anniversary of the start of the war and just a week before Independence Day.
Thanks for your input.