MOSCOW, July 21 -- War movies are not always the finest expression of Russian cultural achievement. Yes, of course, "Battleship Potemkin" is one of the great treasures of modern cinema. But sentimental propaganda films from World War II, still appearing on television almost every day, are painful to watch, usually for the wrong reasons.
It is not easy for a society to confront the emotional burdens of a disastrous war, as Americans learned when films like "Coming Home," about the physical and emotional devastation caused by the Vietnam War, started to appear in the 1970's. "The Moslem," the first major film about the Afghan war, which helped destroy the Soviet Union, was released only last year.
All that would make the "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" a singular achievement even if the film were bad, which it is not. Having already won three major prizes, including a director's award at the Cannes International Film Festival this year, the piercingly emotional look at one of Russia's most disturbing problems, the conflict in Chechnya, has become one of the year's most acclaimed Russian films.
Directed by Sergei Bodrov, based on the novella by Leo Tolstoy and transformed to today's Chechen war with an ease that speaks eloquently about how little has changed on Russia's volatile southern rim in 200 years, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" is the first film about the current war in Chechnya, which has destroyed much of the region and claimed at least 30,000 lives since it began at the end of 1994.
In many ways the film, shot in the remote highlands of Dagestan, only 50 miles from the Chechen fighting, is a common enough war story, dealing with fear, pity and pain. It opens with a wide-eyed and fearful young conscript, played by the director's son, Sergei Bodrov Jr., passing a physical. Within minutes of learning he is "fit to serve the motherland," he finds himself in a caravan of tanks under ambush in Chechnya.
He is captured, along with a cynical and inebriated soldier played by one of Russia's best actors, Oleg Menshikov, who starred in Nikita Mikhalkov's Oscar-winning "Burnt by the Sun." They are then held in a Chechen village, as with Tolstoy's story, to be ransomed or killed.
"These truths that Tolstoy wrote about have not gone away," said Mr. Bodrov, the 48-year-old director, who lives in Los Angeles but often comes to Moscow. "This is a tragic conflict with universal meaning. We started thinking about this movie even before the war in Chechnya began. We were going to film in Tajikistan or Bosnia. Sadly, the war gave us a far better opportunity to make our point."
Mr. Bodrov is still negotiating for an American distributor for the $1.5 million film, which has been sold in 35 other countries. The screenplay diverges from Tolstoy in one important way: Tolstoy, who was an officer in the Caucasus, was passionate and insistent about the necessity for Russia to conquer the many clans there. This film tries to avoid blame, suggesting that the soldiers on each side are decent men who have been sucked into a calamity that can only harm them all.
"Clearly this war is good for nobody," Mr. Bedrov said. "For hundreds of years wars like this in the Caucasus have been good for nobody." The director took pride in noting that shortly after its premiere in Moscow, President Boris N. Yeltsin asked for a private viewing of the movie in the Kremlin. Another screening was held for members of Parliament. The reviews in the press and among the political elite have been favorable. The war has continued unabated.
The film is beautiful to watch, set among the breathtaking mountains in one of Dagestan's oldest villages. As in the Tolstoy story, the younger soldier falls in love with the beautiful daughter of his captor. But the film also tells a simple story of how futile the war in Chechnya has been and how little the soldiers fighting there want it to continue.
Early in the war, Chechen separatist leaders decided that they would release Russian prisoners only to their mothers. It was a slight, knowing variation on Tolstoy, who in his work has the prisoner write to his mother seeking ransom money. These days, prisoner exchanges are a more valuable currency than money in Chechnya, particularly for Russian soldiers. In the early days of the war, mothers made constant treks to the headquarters of the rebels to try to free their children. Some of the most moving scenes in the film are about negotiations between the young recruit's mother and the village elder, Abdul-Murat, who holds the prisoners (and whose son had been captured by the Russians.)
Mr. Bodrov admitted he was not much of a fan of directors who employed their children, but in this case, he said, he was looking for somebody raw, like a recruit, so he chose his son, who is not much older than draft age. The younger Mr. Bodrov, who is pursing doctoral studies in Italian Renaissance painting at Moscow State University, had never acted professionally and does not intend to do it again.
"It was just one of those things that worked once," the elder Mr. Bodrov said. "And it was moving for me." The passions of the film are obvious enough when one Chechen man calmly walks up to his son at a Russian garrison and shoots him to death. Again the scene was taken from Tolstoy and for the same reason: all the man's other sons had been killed by Russians. When the last among them decided to serve the enemy, the father's course was clear.
Three days before the six weeks of filming ended in the rugged mountains, the crew got an unpleasant taste of the true emotions and anxieties floating in the brittle mountain air. They were taken hostage, not by Chechen rebels, as has been reported in the Russian press, but by their own security people.
"The truth is we hired some very serious people to protect us," Mr. Bodrov said. "They were tough guys, professional wrestlers. They came to us with automatic weapons and said they were unhappy. We couldn't understand why at first."
When he found out, Mr. Bodrov almost laughed. The guards had discovered that the director was paying the beguiling 12-year-old female lead, Susanna Mekhralieva, far more money that he was paying them.
"To them this was such a disgrace," Mr. Bodrov said. "It wasn't about money really but about pride. They made it clear that a village girl could not get more than a grown man." After two days of discussions, some of them very threatening, the director and producer came up with more money for their protectors.
"It ended peacefully," he said, "but we realized there was a lot going on in that place we will never understand."

Submitted by Anni Nikolova