★The Red and the White (aka "Csillagosok, katonák") (1967) DVD★

Director : Miklós Jancsó                                 

actors : Christopher Eccleston, Kate Winslet, Liam Cunningham

Subtitles : English, Korean

【Storyline or Review】

# 2 wins & 1 nomination. 

In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side then the other. Captives are executed or sent running naked into the woods. Neither side has a plan, and characters the camera picks out soon die. A White Cossack officer kills a Hungarian and is executed by his own superiors when he tries to rape a milkmaid. At the hospital, White officers order nurses into the woods, dressed in finery, to waltz. A nurse aids the Reds, then they accuse her of treason for following White orders. Red soldiers walk willingly, singing, into an overwhelming force. War seems chaotic and arbitrary.

# The Red and the White (aka "Csillagosok, katonák") (1967) User Review

Rare times when a movie perfectly succeeds in presenting the horrors of war just the way it happens, or close to a predicted version of what we think it must be. I put "The Red and the White" next to "Come and See" and "Schindler's List" in terms of quality and truthful brutal depiction of what war makes to people, the perpetrators and the victims. Miklos Jancsó's film stands above Spielberg's film mainly because it doesn't have the famous stars the Oscar winning film had; rather than that we have unknown actors, therefore we don't create over-sentimental bonds with their personas but really for their characters and what they go through. That's the valuable aspect of the movie. Nothing and no one to cheer or support. But we can feel for the casualties of war, all the lives wasted amidst the domination, oppression and conquest of territories and people.

The title seems to say it all but it doesn't (quite an irony here, specially if considered the way it was filmed). And not even shows it all. It's more than just Hungarian (White) fighting against the Communist Soviet (Red), the latter supported by Communist Hungarians during the WWI; it's more about realizing that is people slaying people, nothing making sense and one cannot tell which side is good or bad, not even identifying who they are. Armies, militaries and divisions come and go and you have to force yourself to figure out which is which and what they stand for. This is the director's intention in demonstrate that ideologies, concepts are very subjective, completely pointless except to kill and destroy. Subjective, invisible yet powerful and destructive. 

Jancsó ignores the use of close-ups, distantly filming the battles, the war games coldly played by the Soviet, then later the Hungarian's unmerciful revenge. He tries to keep us distant from the event but he also knows such is impossible since his images of cruelty and despair brings us closer to the tragedy of lost lives in the most atrocious way. Take a look at the agony of the young maen who were given a small amount of time to escape from their executors to later realize it was all a trap prepared by the Soviet. They inflicted hope for like five minutes, made them run towards a great wall and then killed them all. While doing all that they kept on smiling, treating this like it was a game to be won, with winners and losers.

Unbelievable as it might sound, "The Red and the White" isn't a dated picture. Even if most of us are quite stoic when it comes to violent films, this manages to create a profound impact on us way after we have seen it. Its characters are filled with insensitivity, carelessly displaying any kind of consideration (even some of the victims as well, those in a resigned way). We're the ones who have to care for everything of what's happening. Emotions are left to us, but far from making us cry. Gotta be angry with what human race can do itself.

Tragic, epic, hypnotizing and one of the greatest war films ever made. 10/10 

[The Red and the White (aka "Csillagosok, katonák") (1967) DVD Spec]

Language: English / Hungarian

Menu: English

Subtitles: English / Korean

Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Wide Screen

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0

Region: All Regions 

Length: 92mins