Arsenal deals with the civil strife that occurred in the Ukraine following the overthrow of Czar Nicholas II in 1918. Returning to Kiev from the frontline, a disenchanted soldier called Timosh adopts the Bolshevist cause and seeks to protect the city’s newfound freedom from anti-revolutionary forces. But the unrest comes to a violent head when, outnumbered and holed-up in a munitions depot, Timosh and his followers face the advancing nationalist White Army.
This is a very bleak picture about war and its aftermath, but Dovzhenko uses his expert skills as an avant-garde poet and artist to fuse Soviet propaganda (as desired by his masters) with his own passion for Ukrainian national identity. This is most telling in the film’s gripping climax that pays homage to a centuries old Ukrainian folk tale, in which our Bolshevik hero becomes impervious to his enemies bullets.
Dovzhenko’s nationalist voice is also heard in Zvenigora, the first part of his trilogy, as is his trademark montage style that would carry over to Earth. Zvenigora’s narrative combines an old legend about lost treasure on a mystical mountain called Zvenigora with a modern story set in revolutionary Ukraine. Moving back and forth across the centuries and juxtaposing the country’s distant past with a commentary on the nation’s progress under the Soviets, the film is very early example of cinematic surrealism. It’s hard going, but Dovzhenko’s editing (Sergei Eisenstein was particularly impressed) makes it an eclectic, visual feast for the eyes and the soul.
Anybody with a passion for the 1920’s avant-garde art movement, modernist experimental cinema or Soviet history would do well to see all three of Dovzhenko’s cinematic masterpieces one after the other. Revolutionary, indeed!
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I have personal DVD copies of Zvenigora and Earth, with Arsenal on order. After several viewings I can attest to tough going. I think it must be one those “you had to be there kind of relating experiences”. This early in the game you had three principal Russian film makers – Dovzhenko, Eisenstein, and Pudokin (whose Storm Over Asia ranks as one of the top silent films from this generation and land geography). Eisenstein will always stand as the most commercially successful, but Dovenko is unique in his stylized vision and poetic expressionism. Bottom line, these films were made long ago when a country was divided by civil war between the Whites (old order loyal to Czar) and the Reds (the bolshevik working class which would become the Communist Party). From all the films I’ve seen you could be breaking bread at breakfast with your neighbors and by dusk aiming a rifle thinking them the new enemy. It’s a bit confusing but makes glorious silent films. Stalin had the last say when 20 – 30 million of his own countrymen were slain as potential threats to his hands on, iron fist rule. Any Russian professor of history might take offense, but then I know of no one whom has taken a more personal interest into the what and why than myself. Go figure. Call me when it all adds up. You can reach me 24/7.