Somewhere, in the mountains of the Caucasus, two Russian soldiers, a young conscript and a regular soldier, are made prisoners by Muslim maquisards, whose chief wants to use them as an exchange money because his own son is himself prisoner of the Russians.
The story takes place with the nonchalance and the neutrality of the tale. Bodrov, by little touch, makes the contrasted portrait of the two soldiers, but also the portrait of their jailers: he describes a Muslim community (nameless), archaic and coherent, not prompted by hate nor fanaticism, but with beliefs in the law of retaliation and in the respect of the given word.
He shows the birth of love feeling between the young Russian and the very young girl who brings him some food. He draws also a parallel between the Caucasian chief and the mother of the soldier, both of them wanting, first of all, their own sons to be safe and sound. He draws also a contrasted parallel between two Caucasian patriarchs.
Here ideology does not absolutely matter. The important is the personal feelings, even if they are colored by the cultural tradition or the adherence to a social corps: family relationships, love feelings, friendship, sense of duty, desire of vengeance, resignation, etc.
In other words, Bodrov's originality consists in showing a contemporary war, as Chechnya's war, by remaining strictly faithful to the spirit and to the characterization of the narrations in the 19th century: not only Tolstoy, whose story inspired the screenplay, but also Pushkin (author of another "Prisoner of the Caucasus"), Gogol ("Tarass Boulba") or Gobineau ("Nouvelles asiatiques"). Bodrov shot his film in 1996 in the grandiose landscapes from Dagestan. It was presented this same year at the "Quinzaine des Realisateurs" in Cannes. Subtle visual rhymes draw together the steles covered with lichen in the Muslim cemetery and the leopard fatigue dresses of the Russians.
Bodrov has successfully directed the casting where a star (Oleg Menshikov) is side by side with non professionals and with Bodrov's own son, who plays the part of the young prisoner.
Submitted by Juliet Regibot