Rarely does a war film grab your emotions and your imagination as you become consumed by the drama.
An old Russian saying, "It's easier to kill a man than to love him" underpins this cri de coeur against the cynicism of war and the delusions of empire. Boris Yeltsin reportedly saw Prisoner of the Mountains and not long afterwards opened negotiations for peace with Chechnya. So deeply affecting is this film that it is not difficult to understand why.
There is a moment in the best films when acting ceases and the characters just appear to behave. So right is the casting, so relaxed are the performances and so unobtrusive is the direction that they swallow you up and you find yourself enveloped by the drama of their lives.
This is the case with this film, screened at Cannes in 1996 where it won the International Critics Prize and the Audience Award. Its title here is Prisoner of the Mountains but it has screened elsewhere as The Prisoner of the Caucasus (Kavazskii plennik).
Although no definite location is named it is clear that the film has resonances with the war in Chechnya while its title echoes that of Tolstoy's novella Caucasian Captive from which the film draws inspiration.
History repeats itself in this region with terrifying monotony. The Caucasus have been at war, struggling on and off for independence, for centuries. While we may be familiar with the beauty of their rugs, the culture of countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Osetiya, Inguhetiya, Georgia and Abkhasiya remain something of a mystery to most Australians; a mystery prised open by this film.
Because of the difficulties of filming in Chechnya, shooting was undertaken in the neighbouring country of Dagestan. And spectacular it proves to be. The opening helicopter shot of a stone village clinging precariously to the shoulder of a hill, surrounded by precipitous mountains, takes your breath away. And because the location is so remote, many of the local inhabitants were hired as extras, providing the film with a convincing and colourful authenticity.
At one point, during a hellish shooting schedule spread over seven months in a village without electricity or running water, the security guards (a group of wrestlers who feature in one scene of the film), took the crew hostage, and only released them after a financial settlement was arranged. A case of life imitating art.
The broad story is a familiar one of an empire in decline struggling to impose its will on a resentful, subject people. But the film takes a more intimate route revealing greater truths by observing the geopolitical writ small, through the rituals of ordinary daily life.
Abdoul-Mourat, a Muslim village elder (played by Djemal Sikharulidze) captures a novice Russian conscript Vania (played by the director's son Sergei Bodrov jnr) and an experienced soldier Sacha (Oleg Menshikov of Burnt By The Sun).
Chained to one another, the two Russians are kept alive for 10 days while negotiations take place with a cynical military commander in the vain hope of effecting an exchange for Abdoul's son, detained by the Russian forces. A friendship develops between the two Russian soldiers and between the conscript and his captor's young daughter, Dina, touchingly played by a local 12-year-old, Susanna Mekhralieva. When the conscript's mother arrives to plead for his release their captivity ends but not before one of them lies dead. It is revealing of the director's sympathies that at the end the Muslim elder shows more humanity than the would-be Russian conquerors.
The Russian soldiers, the epitome of innocence and experience, haven't an inkling of understanding for the people they have been sent to subjugate and conquer. The contrast between their culture, in manners, in religion, and materiality is painfully evident.
Yet the director, Sergei Bodrov, sympathises with the Caucasians and their motives, observing their way of life with care and obvious affection. What connects the Russians and the Caucasians is a tenuous thread of common humanity.
Bodrov is critical of his countrymen. In one scene a Russian soldier buys two bottles of vodka, slamming his military pistol on to the counter as payment. Nor is the film without humour or tenderness. The scene when the two Russians break into spontaneous dancing after a binge on illicit, village alcohol is both spontaneous and wry.
Prisoner Of The Mountains refuses easy solutions to complex human predicaments. Its brilliance lies in its simplicity which grasps the imagination like a force of nature. One of the year's best films.

Submitted by Anni Nikolova