Two riflemen in 28 Panfilovtsev
On the sixteenth of November, 1941, 28 members of the Red Army’s 316th Rifle Division under the command of General Ivan Panfilov held off the advance of the Nazi Wehrmacht’s 2nd Panzer Division and managed to destroy eighteen enemy tanks, armed with nothing but grenades, Molotov cocktails and Mosin-Nagant rifles. This stunning act of underdog heroism was immediately commemorated and acquired the status of a Soviet war legend. This legend was so popular, by the way, that my wife Jessie remembered the battle and Vasilii Klochkov’s famous rallying cry from her high school history textbooks. In 2009 when I was in Almaty, I ended up visiting a monument (see the photo below) erected to the memory of the 316th Riflemen, many of whom were Kazakhs.
The tale of these soldiers became the basis for the crowdsourced, joint Russian-Kazakhstani 2016 historical war film 28 Panfilovtsev (or Panfilov’s 28), directed by Kim Druzhinin and Andrei Shal’opa. I recently watched this film, and am posting a review of it now in honour of the Battle of Moscow and the sacrifice of the historical 28 and their thousands of comrades in the 316th Riflemen.
There was a bit of controversy surrounding the film when it came out, largely as a result of Sergei Mironenko’s politically-motivated ‘release’ of classified Soviet documents about the Battle of Moscow, at the same time the film was in the works, that ended up getting him fired. The Soviet legend that the entire unit was wiped out to the last man had been previously discredited, and there were six survivors from the unit. But the controversy around the film was amplified beyond reason by Anglophone sources which proceeded from an assumption that the film was Putinist propaganda. Shal’opa’s film actually does follow as much of the real history as possible, rather than the Soviet legend: in the end of the film he shows the six survivors of the Battle of Moscow from the 316th Riflemen.
‘Behind us is Moscow’
28 Panfilovtsev begins in the snow-bound woods outside Moscow, with the steeple of an old Orthodox church in the background and a bunch of houses with fenced yards outside. This is where the Red Army is making preparations for a German attack. Some of the soldiers are reading month-old news releases about bravery against the odds and heroic deaths of soldiers elsewhere on the Eastern Front, setting a premonitory tone for the main action of the film. A tank specialist with the rank of Lieutenant is giving a lecture to the riflemen, but one of them – Moskalenko – keeps cracking wise about the finickiness of German weaponry to lighten the mood. Moskalenko gets sent to fetch materials to build a mock German tank, and the platoon is made to practise trying to destroy the tanks from inside trenches with grenades and Molotov cocktails.
The officers, however, are visibly worried. The Red Army is being stretched thin and there are not enough troops to push back on the Germans. Although the unit is clearly underequipped and some of the enlisted men in the unit question why – if they know where the German Panzers are – they aren’t being sent forward with the proper materials to bring the fight to them, the officers sternly tell them that their orders are to hold the line and protect Moscow.
We then see the soldiers making preparations for the German assault. ‘The Germans aren’t stupid’ is a repeated refrain we hear, as they set to work making decoy gun emplacements, digging false trenches, and using white burlap and rags to hide their true positions. One of the men semi-seriously starts telling stories about how other units shot down German spy planes with ordinary rifles, leading his partner to try his own hand at one flying over. The second assault comes and wipes out all but twenty-eight men. They radio for backup from higher up, but the officers there tell them none is to be had, and to hold out for as long as they can. They then make ready preparing for a second assault from the German tank brigade, and then a third. After the third assault is when the political officer, Vasilii Klochkov (Aleksei Morozov), delivers his famous line: ‘Our motherland is so vast; but we have nowhere to retreat. Behind us is Moscow!’
‘O Lord, save thy people and bless thine inheritance’
The action of the film is fairly straightforward. The ragtag, poorly-armed, worn-out group of foot soldiers manages to hold off an entire German tank battalion at heavy cost to themselves. The film is accurate and true to the history in that there are six survivors at the end. The men themselves are a mixture of Russians and Kazakhs. There’s a bit of banter between them – moving between serious talk and joking – about the nature of their fight; after all, the Kazakhs were basically draughted and are serving in a unit that’s defending Moscow. The director sets it up (accurately enough) that the Kazakhs are largely snipers, and the Russians are their logistics support, which allows for these discussions to happen. Intriguingly, the Russians see the Kazakhs as Russians; though the Kazakhs see themselves as either Kazakhs or Soviets. One of the logistics men asks his Kazakh partner: ‘So you’re Kazakh? Does that mean you’re not Russian? … I’m kidding!’ And he then goes on to add: ‘And when we fight for Kazakhstan, then we will show [the Germans]who the Kazakhs are!’
Cinematographically, 28 Panfilovtsev is drop-dead gorgeous. Shal’opa used a real location outside Moscow, and shot in the early winter snow. The crew used real vehicles and real pyrotechnics with only a minimum of CGI effects. The camerawork has a retro traditionalism to it; despite the claustrophobic takes inside the trenches (designed to amplify the sense of dread), there’s a preference for high-angle ærial sweeps and slow pans outside them. There is a very late-Soviet feel to the film: a certain gravitas that modern Hollywood blockbusters have lost. It also has gritty action, palpable tension and real stakes to the soldiers’ deaths, but there was surprisingly little blood shown. One aspect is very much not Soviet, and that is the subtle nod to religion among the soldiery. There is one touching scene in which a soldier takes off his hat and says the Troparion to the Cross (‘O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine inheritance…’) – a very un-Soviet sentiment. Another soldier asks him what he’s doing, and he tells him he merely said ‘For the motherland.’
‘Since when do shepherds know how to shoot?’
The film itself actually makes a sly riposte to those in Anglophone media who did not even wait for it to come out to question its authenticity and truthfulness to historical record – as though that’s ever been a priority for Hollywood. In one of the scenes, the soldiers discuss the Japanese legend which was the basis for The Seven Samurai, where seven noblemen defended a village against forty bandits. There’s a bit of banter about whether he was just doing it for the money. Then another one, doubting the legend’s authenticity, says he heard the same legend, but that it was set ‘somewhere in America’, and that the noblemen were ‘shepherds’. Another Red Army soldier scoffs at these stories, calling them ‘folktales’ and saying that they were obviously not historically-accurate.
This scene introduces a certain fourth-wall hugging, ironic approach to 28 Panfilovtsev’s own place in Russia’s cinematic culture and ‘national conversation’, as well as being a jab at Hollywood’s own shameless mythmaking and fabrication. The point the director is trying to make by having the Red Army soldiers discuss the plots of The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, is precisely that legends have a life of their own and that ‘folktales’ have a value that transcends a narrowly factitious view of historiography. There’s an additional layer of irony at play in that the chief cowboy in The Magnificent Seven was played by a Russian from the Far East. One of the soldiers mentions the sharpshooting abilities of the ‘shepherds’ in Kemerovo Oblast: a nice little wink-nod at Brynner’s origins.
‘I don’t want any heroes – just burn those tanks’
It’s been remarked that Shal’opa’s film is a throwback to Soviet propaganda pieces and Osterns of the seventies. That may be so – the direct parallels to, for example, Beloe solntse pustyni are certainly there, and Shal’opa was not exactly shy about his ambitions in that direction. I also mentioned the retro-feeling cinematography. But I also noticed some distinct commonalities instead with Kazakh New Wave films. The films of the Kazakh New Wave, of course, are (generally) not war-films; they tend to be concerned with smaller and human-scale stories. However: Shal’opa made a deliberate decision, directly following Kazakh New Wave directors like Ómirbaev and Shynarbaev, to cast acting-school graduates – amateurs – in all of the leading rôles instead of established film stars. The only actor I recognised was the one who played the sniper Alikbaı Kosaev (Amadu Mamadakov), who had a supporting rôle as Targutai in Mongol. I believe this tack of recruiting amateur actors worked incredibly well: we are therefore faced with ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, which is precisely what Druzhinin and Shal’opa wanted to capture.
Also, similarly to Kazakh New Wave cinema, there is a self-referential and socially-conscious subtext to the film, exploring questions of patriotism and heroism in remarkably subtle and human-scaled ways. Even though the film eschews the psychedelic stylings of Otyrardyń kúıreýi, at least part of the gist is similar. Panfilov’s 28 guardsmen are not superhuman or self-sacrificial in their heroism. In fact, Shal’opa portrays the riflemen as human and struggling, which allows for the film to ask deep and relevant questions about how soldiers are able to overcome doubt and despair and convince themselves to keep going in the face of impossible odds. There are also even some echoes of Brat here in that, where the violence is shown, it isn’t overly gruesome or sanguinary. But the perfunctory way in which it is treated is unsettling in its own right. War is (and is shown to be) a messy, dirty, claustrophobic, deafening, hellish business, not romantic or glorious at all – and the palpable fears of the soldiers are made felt onscreen. But it’s in the midst of that fear that real camaraderie and real courage, not a caricature of it, is able to shine through. It’s certainly not the ham-fisted propaganda piece that PRI, the BBC and the Guardian prematurely made it out to be.
The crowdsourced aspect of the film is worth remarking on as well, since Shal’opa has made it such a central point of 28 Panfilovtsev’s marketing. The opening credits crediting the ‘help of donations from 35,086 people’ are shown first, before those for the Russian Ministry of Culture and Kazakhfilm. Indeed, at first, the film was financed completely ‘from below’. It was only after he began on the project with these donations that the Russian Ministry of Culture and Kazakhfilm were convinced to come aboard. Shal’opa referred to 28 Panfilovtsev as a ‘people’s film’, and held it up as a foil not only to Hollywood, but also to big-budget state-funded blockbusters at home. There’s no doubt that the crowdfunding of the film contributed to the unique atmosphere and tone of the film, and that’s one among many reasons to appreciate it. As a ‘people’s film’, it’s worth appreciating that it doesn’t sanitise the Great Patriotic War and shows those who fought it as real human beings.
Leaving aside the historical controversies around it, as a war film, 28 Panfilovtsev doesn’t disappoint. I keep saying that it’s a deeply human film, and I say it because it’s true. It isn’t glossy or CGI-laden or glamorous; and there are no superstars to be seen among the cast. Mostly, 28 Panfilovtsev is a film about 28 ordinary men just fighting stubbornly just to stay alive, and finding as they do so that there is indeed a real courage and a real heroism to be had – one running deeper than any platitude or slogan.
Memorial to Panfilov’s 28 Guardsmen in Almaty
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