The love stories that run through the film are intriguing, love always is. Some of the characters are difficult to form an emotional bond with (including Lyudmila, which is too bad, given she’s the main character). The film is very well made and production value is generally up to par. The English was a nice touch for English speakers. Other actors in the film who play English speaking characters have been criticized as being terrible voice actors, but give them a break, they are Russian actors who worked hard to learn the lines, spoke them well enough, and are at least not stooping to speaking Russian with an English accent. The actress is a native English speaker (played by Joan Blackham), and her voice is annoyingly condescending as a Democratic first lady’s ought to be. I doubt this was the film maker’s intent, and its doubly ironic given Roosevelt’s ‘progressive’ slant that glorifies most things Marxy. While doing so, she highlights the lack of true femininity that is so lost in the fog of Soviet thinking. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (herself portrayed accurately as a communist sympathizer) is represented as an annoying but well-meaning woman who, ironically, repeatedly tries to ’empower’ Lyudmila’s femine side. She is clearly uncomfortable by her role as a pawn, and struggles to obey her political handlers. first lady and is paraded out into various PR situations. Lyudmila tells her story as a guest of the U.S. She becomes a pawn in the deceptive propaganda machine that the Soviets so commonly employed to show how glorious a life could be while living under its jackboot. The story documents many struggles in the life of the heroine, but most obvious (perhaps unintended), is a deep struggle with the character’s femininity seeking to overcome her Soviet-imposed status as merely a human resource.
Essentially – if we cut through all the cultural rubbish of elevating Russian female warriors to some mythical level – the film documents how the Soviet machine made a publicity tool out of a tough young lady. There's a fair amount of action in the movie, however, so I don't think that the kind of people who wouldn't go for a biopic would come away disappointed or feeling mislead.The 2015 film Battle for Sevastopol ( Bitva za Sevastopol) follows the life of historic character Lyudmila Pavlichenko as she has her life and future forever altered by the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War.
#Battle for sevastopol 2015 english movie#
This brings me to the point that, despite the title, the movie's focus isn't as much on the port city of Sevastopol as it's on the Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and the movie being called "Battle for Sevastopol" betrays an apparent lack of confidence in selling a biopic of a female sniper. The actors were well cast, with Yuliya Peresild's performance creating a main character that can grow on you, and some interesting supporting characters. Coming in the wake of Russian WWII-themed schlock like Stalingrad (2013), I didn't expect too much, and there was a somewhat similar, almost gaudy quality present, but overall the movie was much more decent, particularly considering that its budget was about 5 times smaller than Stalingrad's. The production apparently begun before the conflict, and it's an achievement in itself that it's been seen through, since a project like this probably wouldn't be possible today. It's a weird time to see a joint Ukrainian and Russian film project to come out, considering the breakdown in relations between the two countries. A mind-blowing alternative to the American Sniper. On seeing the movie I was a bit puzzled why its name bears "Battle for Sevastopol" as it is only touched upon. It is not a blockbuster action-filled war theme that must be a dangling carrot for a moviegoer but rather a biographical sniper daily routine and mentality.
Most moving is the tragedy of the main character who lives through the first two years of war and a personal tragedy. With a moderate budget, as it appears to me, the makers were restricted to a moderate combined arms warfare footage, but of a very decent quality. A sad personal drama wound into the 1941 context when Wehrmacht was advancing in Southern Ukraine, USSR. The storyline goes on about a true WW2 Red Army female sniper with the highest confirmed hit list ever. Probably the bulk of the scenes was shot in 2013. The producer was able to pull the Russia-Ukraine title all in one piece despite the events of 2014 in Kiev.
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