9 ROTA (The Ninth Company)
Russia, 2005, 139 minutes, Colour.
Fyodor Bondarchuk, Alexeksi Chadov.
Directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk.
The Ninth Company is the equivalent of a Russian platoon. It uses the conventional picture of recruits, their training, their going into action, the difficulties in camaraderie, the fighting in outposts, their being overwhelmed by the enemy, death and survival. It is a critique of war and warfare.
The actor-director, Fyodor Bondarchuk, is the son of Sergei Bondarchuk who made the epic Russian War and Peace as well as the English language Waterloo with Christopher Plummer and Rod Steiger as Wellington and Napoleon.
The film shows a group in Siberia being recruited and sent for training. There are familiar scenes of training and difficulties as well as rivalries among the recruits. However, the setting is Afghanistan in 1988, almost a decade after the Russian invasion – and the lack of progress that the Russians had made in quelling their enemies. This serves also as background, since the film was made in 2005, to the American bombings and occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 – and the seeming futility of trying to make peace in that country.
The film is strikingly made, photographed, with some very vivid and violent war scenes.
1.The impact of the film? Its popularity in Russia? Universal appeal?
2.The familiar platoon framework, recruits, training, initial action, under fire, deaths? The comment on war and warfare? Its effect on soldiers?
3.The Afghan setting, the background of the Russian war in Afghanistan in the 1980s? The final retreat? The message for war in Afghanistan in the 21st century?
4.The colour photography, the locations, Siberia, Afghanistan and the desert and mountains? The special effects for warfare? The staging of the battle sequences? Musical score?
5.The focus on the variety of recruits, their being at the station, getting ready to go, the farewells, the young man and his girlfriend, the cynical commenter? The travel to the camp?
6.The recruits, the sergeant major and his discipline? Their bunks, the hardships of the training? The familiar details of the physical training? The men together, their conversations, the preoccupation about sex? Their going out, the women in the town? The young woman at the Afghan border – and sexual relationships? The farewells?
7.In Afghanistan, the young men and their eagerness, the experienced soldiers, the officers?
8.The skirmishes, the fighting, the strategies? The different terrain? The nature of the enemy? The Islamic background and the warnings to the recruits? The Islamic soldiers from Chechnya?
9.The human relationships, in the battlefield, helping each other, stress, crises?
10.The Christmas celebration, the peace, the sudden attack? The men under fire – and the long sequence of the battle, the enemy advancing, the firing against them, their being overwhelmed, hand-to-hand combat, deaths?
11.The aftermath? The few survivors? The announcement of the retreat from Afghanistan and the failure of the war there?
