War, unfortunately, is eternal - something we clearly see in "Prisoner of the Mountains." Writer-director Sergei Bodrov's powerful film of two Russian soldiers held captive in a Chechnya mountain village was a prize-winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival, where it was judged the best film shown out of competition - and a major contender for this year's foreign language Oscar. The film deserves those plaudits. Bodrov's movie has the clarity, force and simple humanity of anti-war classics like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Paths of Glory" or the '50s-'60s Russian films "Ballad of a Soldier," "The Cranes are Flying" and "Ivan's Childhood." It has substance, heart, fire.
There's an important change, though. "Prisoner" has a contemporary background, and it was shot in Dagestan, not far from the same area where Russians and Chechnyans have been fighting today. But the story is based on "Prisoner of the Caucasus," written in the 19th Century by the great novelist of "War and Peace," Leo Tolstoy.
When he wrote "Caucasus," Tolstoy was an ex-Russian Army officer in favor of Russian expansion, describing an earlier battle between Russia and the Caucasus, which he had personally witnessed. But Bodrov easily adapts the same tale to his own anti-war viewpoint, creating an unvarnished look at modern war's madness and horror.
The movie is also leavened by a humor, compassion and gentleness that only makes the drama more disturbing. An acerbic look at barracks life and a deliberately deglamorized mountain battle scene set "Prisoner's" mordant tone. Then, the two Russian soldiers caught in the ambush - cynical Sacha (Oleg Menshikov) and callow Vania (Sergei Bodrov Jr., the director's son) - are brought to the village and held hostage, bait in a possible exchange for a Chechnyan prisoner, the son of their captor Abdoul-Mourat (Jemal Sikharulidze).
As Abdoul-Mourat tries to bargain with Russian Army officers who aren't really interested (they expect the Russian hostages to be killed anyway), Vania's aging schoolteacher mother travels to the mountain to try to negotiate. (This is no melodramatic touch, but a common practice today and in Tolstoy's time.)
Sacha, whose nickname is "Sly" (perhaps in honor of Sylvester Stallone), is a hardened, profane, irreverent career soldier, an orphan with no family ties who, initially, bullies and abuses the younger, more idealistic Vania. A handyman and clock repairer, the gentler Vania makes friends of a sort with their mute guard Hasan. And, especially, with Abdoul-Mourat's young daughter, Dina (Susanna Mekhralieva), who brings the Russians their food and eventually gets a crush on Vania.
Eventually, we see that all three prisoners - the Russians on the mountain and the Chechnyan in the Russian camp - are perhaps about to be killed by men who bear them no malice, for reasons few of them care about. Bodrov's main theme lies in an awful irony: the inability of all these people, despite any human connections they may develop, to escape the war's brutal grip.
Around them are the mountains, so stunningly photographed by Pavel Lebeshev (Nikita Mikhalkov's one-time cinematographer on "A Slave of Love") that they seem an endless, hallowed presence. Clinging to those cliffs are the ancient villages, with their stern but fair inhabitants. No one we see in this lofty paradise is wholly evil, not even roguish tough-guy and killer Sacha. They are all simply at war, which is Bodrov's point.
As Sacha, Menshikov is funny, sexy and intense. In a way, he is playing the quintessential military outsider: pragmatic and violent but likable, with no parents, and with loyalties only to the Army and his own self interest - or his buddies'. Menshikov was the turncoat in Nikita Mikhalkov's great "Burnt by the Sun," and he gives the film a mercurial presence. Lithe wit and a wounded heart peer out beneath the hard-gut swagger.
Vania is the purer-hearted of the two, a confused youth about to undergo a terrible change. And Bodrov's son, in his movie debut, has both charisma and understated force. The non-professional actors playing the villagers offer tremendous innate dignity and sincerity. And, as Dina, Mekhralieva, whom Bodrov found during open calls for actual villagers, is frequently amazing; a natural child actress of high instinct, grace and emotion.
But all these rich performances, along with Lebeshev's eye-catching cinematography, only underscore the film's theme. War, let loose in this beautiful land among these likable people, wreaks its bloody will regardless of any of them.
Unlike the majority of American battle movies in recent years - movies that often treat real wars as huge video games fought by wise-cracking superheroes and bloodthirsty supervillains - Bodrov's update of Tolstoy's tale suggests that wars are simply fought, with sometimes hideous consequences, by men. (And, in this case, women and children.)
Not too far from any dreams of heroism lie bloody anguish and suffering. Not far from the lust for martial glory is the death of hope. Though it's based on a classic writer's 19th Century tale, the spirit proves timeless. A fine film, with good eyes and heart, "Prisoner of the Mountains" well witnesses one more instance of this century's apparently endless savagery.

Submitted by Anni Nikolova