It took this splendid film 6 years to reach the French screens. In fact, it was filmed in 1996 and presented in Cannes at the "Quinzaine des Realisateurs". Meanwhile, a new war in Chechnya, still more atrocious, replaced the previous one, in an indifference of the rest of the world still more disgraceful. Meanwhile, the director went to work in the USA, came back to his country, where he played in a epic at the glory of a Russian Rambo massacring the Chechens: "War" by Alexander Balabanov. In a word, the world did not get better, anyway it was not really cheerful at the time of the "Prisoner".
Not cheerful, but very beautiful. Bodrov is not content with choosing places and splendid actors, he knows how to film each situation with an eye, where he lets in a flash of amazement in front of the world, in spite of everything aiming at making it ugly and ruining it. He also knows how to tint with entertaining, dream, sensuality, the most banal or terrible situations. In a word, Bodrov is a genuine director; the expressive treasure of his way of filming is confirmed already in the first scenes.
The film opens with a procession of naked bodies of adolescents, showed ironically and already tragically. These boys in serried ranks, who cover with hands their bellies, though nurses don't look at them, are the cannon fodder that is going to be declared fit for going to the death in the Caucasus. A very brief scene - in the field already - mixes anyhow cheerful sense of festivity, rapture of alcohol and danger, and something surnatural in the inhumanity of the situation and the humanity of those who suffer from it.
Sasha, the keen fighter and good sort, will be caught by the enemy with Vanya, the novice nearly enrolled. The old Chechen, who kidnapped them, wants to exchange them to his own son, prisoner of the Russians. Then takes place a strange ballet, at the dimensions of the immense landscapes of the mountains of the Caucasus, at the dimensions of the madness of the men at war, and at the same time on the scale of everyday labours, of the sweet glances of the young girl. Bodrov directs a story but he doesn't tell it. He unfolds it, by scenes that are as large surfaces, with intentions variable like changes of luminosity , without worrying too much about the dramatic continuity nor about the logic of the mix.
The face to face between the prisoners and their deaf and dumb jailer, a festivity between guerilleros with dancing between folk and mystic , a seance of fight between colossus on an immense plate of rusted sheet steel, the mine clearance of a path by headlight, the visit to the town of an old man, who tries to obtain the release of his son, the dance of the young girl adorned with red veils and silver jewels... It is not the episodes of a narration , but it is like the big touches of color and emotion of a fresco painted with fullness and generosity, striped by the violence of a saber decapitation, the sorrow of a mother gone through an Empire and finally unable to save her child.
There is no spelling mistake in the title, the singular does not ignore that two soldiers are captive. In fact, it is the whole Russian armada who is trapped, in spite of their power, but also all the Chechen people hampered by history in this bloody vice. The singular goes beyond the case of one and all, first of all the protagonists. The strength, the jokes and the talent of Oleg Menshikov, star of the Russian cinema, who gives his own aura to Sasha, and the natural and full of childish charm son of the director as Vanya, the magnetism of all the characters, even the ones nearly outlined, the splendor of the landscapes, are as the stake itself of this film: the scale on which you can measure the sinister absurdity of war.

Submitted by Juliet Regibot