The Ascent (1977) [The Criterion Collection]
The Ascent (1977)
BDRip 1080p | MKV | 1480x1080 | x264 @ 11,3 Mbps | 109 min | 8,87 Gb
Audio: Russian FLAC 1.0 @ 254 Kbps | Subs: English (embedded in MKV)
Genre: Art-house, Drama, War
BDRip 1080p | MKV | 1480x1080 | x264 @ 11,3 Mbps | 109 min | 8,87 Gb
Audio: Russian FLAC 1.0 @ 254 Kbps | Subs: English (embedded in MKV)
Genre: Art-house, Drama, War
Director: Larisa Shepitko
Writers: Vasiliy Bykov (novel), Yuri Klepikov (screenplay)
Stars: Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergey Yakovlev
The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film’s earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory. With stark, visceral cinematography that pits blinding white snow against pitch-black despair, The Ascent finds poetry and transcendence in the harrowing trials of war.
IMDB - 4 wins
In the Belarus of 1942, two Soviet soldiers are captured by Nazi-friendly Belarusians. In captivity, the attitude of the two men toward their fate differs greatly. One of the soldiers manages to find an inner strength and spirituality, incomprehensible to the other man. Larisa Shepitko's last film is one of the most beautiful war films in cinema history. The cinematography, by Vladimir Chuchnov, is incredible - particularly in the opening sequence, where long, slow, tracking shots depicting the solitude and almost desperate nature of winter landscape in rural Belarus set the mood perfectly. It is easy to draw comparison to Tarkovsky's films, even more so since Tarkovsky's alter ego Anatoli Solonitsyn has a small but important part in The Ascent. The acting is overall brilliant, especially by Boris Plotnikov, in the part of Sotnikov. The film reveals an old-fashioned belief in the strength of religious passion, which feels related to characters such as Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin, or Tarkovsky's Stalker. However, this is not a weakness of the film, but rather one of its greatest strengths. The religious content seems so honest, and human, that it is impossible not to be moved. The emotional richness of the film cannot be overstated; the answer is not as simplified as a short summary of the plot would make you think. The slow development of the characters, and the emphasis on their complicated relationships to each other, are somewhat reminiscent of The Commissar, another great Soviet film. The Ascent deserves a second watching, as well as a third, and a tenth. It continues to provide interesting ideas, beautiful images, and emotional complexity.
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The Ascent (1977) [The Criterion Collection]
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