Kontroll (2003) vs. Father of a Soldier (1965)

[Curtis, baby]

Kontroll (Nimród Antal, 2003) vs. Father of a Soldier (Revaz Chkheidze, 1965)

Vote for either x2003 or x1965 (italicization unnecessary).

The deadline for voting is 12 a.m. EST on Thursday, April 25.

If you need access to the films, please let us know.

[kanafani]

x1965

Father of a Soldier is a perfectly respectable and quite good-looking war movie with equal doses of humor and pathos. Things sometimes get a tad too sentimental with the lead actor, an earthy, strong-as-oak type that functions as a stand-in for the unwavering soviet/Georgian spirit (or something like that). But it's all good. Clicking the director's name in letterboxd I see that I have recently seen another film of his: Magdana’s Donkey. I think the donkey is the stronger movie, but this one's fine as well.

Kontrol is frenetic and flashy in a very off-putting way. It deals with a pretty standard and uninspiring band of "misfits" and "weirdos", and seems to adopt Trainspotting as its template. I became a hostile viewer within a few minutes. Quite a shame, as subways are my favorite place on earth. If you like this, god bless you, but this is just not for me at all.

[arkheia]

x1965



My viewing of Father of a Soldier got broken up over several days so my thoughts on it are a bit scattered but overall I enjoyed the farmer's journey, from the Gurjaani countryside to Berlin and from civilian to soldier, in search of his son fighting at the frontline. Both tragic and comedic with well maintained moments of humanity (an instantaneous father/son relationship with a younger soldier while under heavy fire) balanced with sentimentality (a musical detail sent to reward the soldiers plays Georgian music while they sleep).



I didn't mind the flashiness in Kontroll although just a few days after watching it, I'm already having trouble remembering what happens in the film. Antal strongly conjures a feeling of being lost in his death drive characters and allows the irony of being stuck in life working in a place specifically built for transportation to manifest itself naturally without needing to overemphasize it. He plays fast and loose with his narrative’s framework, dipping into expressionistic passages and shading in the corners of his perpetually bloody metro station. The film hits its stride in capturing the characters' reckless daredevil antics as unconsciously self-punishing expressions against their omnipresent mechanical infrastructure, grinding down and hurtling past them at all times. However the septic physicality of this environment falls out of focus when the film’s ‘calling card’ impulses take the wheel, i.e. voguish green textures and sprinkled-around homages to the usual film school suspects.

[mesnalty]

x1965

I too was rather put off by the very early-2000s style of Kontroll (the soundtrack, the mostly undistinguished visual style, with some exceptions), which I really don't think has aged well. Father of a Soldier is perhaps a bit too fabulistic at times, but it's a beautiful, simple story.

[Angel]

x2003

[Brotherdeacon]

I can't vote on this card, I don't care more for one than the other. Both have strengths, both deserve watching, neither is great.

FOAS is a renowned Soviet WWII film from Georgian director Rezo Chkheidze, released in 1964. It relies on a simple, sympathetic story, and a memorable acting performance by Sergo Zakariadze as the Georgian peasant Gyorgi who journeys to the front looking for his son, a tank officer fighting in the Soviet Army. "Father of a Soldier" emits loads of charm and Socialism's perhaps overly-wholesome values. The directing and battle scenes choreography are complex, but it's the role played by Sergo Zakariadze which elevates it somewhere above an average war film. Oddly, the entire film has the look of one which was shot with WW II era filming techniques as well as story points and drama. An experiment of sorts and a positive lack of more modernist possibilities for the particular re-creation. At times, it reminded me of Boris Barnet's war films, rather than, say, John Frankenheimer's The Train also from 1964--not merely a question of abilities, but of decision-making and it's allegiance to the subject.

By 2019, when I watched Father of a Soldier, a certain amount of mawkishness seems to have surfaced, which is tough to stomach in our more pragmatic and less gushy times. But, one of the joys in watching old films is transfixing our appreciation in more universal themes than merely historical differences, that and sitting in our time-machine equipment and allowing our imaginations a ride down the Mississippi River on a crude 19th century raft, or to romantically fall for a sales girl in an old world emporium on a quaint Budapest block. Cinema shares with other arts the ability to widen our world view, be it cognitively or chronologically; where often the distance proves to be our challenge as well as our gain. --comment from LB'd.

I don't mean to be a spoiler, but Kontroll is about a guy who starts out wearing 1 kilo of simulated blood make-up and ends-up wearing 3 kilos of simulated blood make-up. In 2003, Hungarian director Nimród Antal's feature seemed to follow those action/comedy treatments (seasoned by horror trappings) with which the British were/are so enamored. Film festivals, especially audience awards, loved it. The sound track composed by NEO is an underground divination in itself. But even as a cryptic allegory with a style which is easy to watch, it can't lose its edge of inanity. --comment from LB'd sort of.

[Lencho of the Apes]

x2003

Father Of A Soldier deserves any place it's got in the orthodox canon; it's got those virtues (cinematography, humanist outlook) that should recommend it to film students, but it fits predictably into a niche defined by those positive qualities; anybody who was thinking "I feel like watching a _____________ " should be able to turn it up pretty easily, and get what they expected from it. None of which is a bad thing. Me personally, the sentimental, "folksy," bathetic tone is one that I feel wary of specifically when those things are put to work supporting a dominant ideology that draws strength from the emotional appeal they hold for the viewer.

Kontroll, on the other hand... I won't even say it's a better movie, but it's a good one, it does its cultural work in more unpredictable ways, and it's one I'm not likely to have found on my own. The only other movie I can think of that does anything similar in terms of looking at Eastern Europe's Soviet history and the transition to capitalism is A Serbian Movie, and this one's considerably lighter in tone and more palatable.

[Mario Gaborovic]

x1965

[ofrene]

x2003

Well.. Father of a Soldier is undeniably well-made war movie but not more than that. Kontroll is undeniably flawed(and that ending......) but also more resonant to me somehow

[john ryan]

x2003

[rischka]

ehh i can't really vote, haven't seen kontroll since it came out but i enjoyed 'how my dad won the war.' i'm a sucker for this stuff but the ending was too much even for me lol

[Curtis, baby]

x2003

enjoyed both. but KONTROLL is one of my *all-time* top hits

[Curtis, baby]

Voting closed! Kontroll (2003) wins!