Fuck 'Solaris,' this is the real Soviet riposte to '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Similar to Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, the movie tracks an innocent boy through the hellish wasteland of Nazi occupied U.S.S.R.(specifically Belarus). Unfolding like a droning feedback loop, the brutality slowly builds until reaching an apex of all-devouring cruelty. Perhaps the most realistic war movie ever made, not only for its grim portrayal of Nazi atrocities, but also for the heavily symbolic dream narrative that lies underneath. The most precise war stories often bear the least resemblance to reality as we know it.
