The Ascent

This starts and finishes with the same shot - a freezing cold snowscape peppered with a few telegraph poles amidst a wilderness that the Soviet population were prepared to to die to protect from the invading Nazis. Two Red Army partisans are doing their best to frustrate their enemy whilst combating the brutality of the terrain and the climate. "Sotnikov" (Boris Plotnikov) and "Rybak" (Vladimir Gostyukhin) are out foraging for food when they encounter some sheep and then themselves become the hunted as a patrol chases them to a remote farmhouse and thence conveys them to a prison. It's here that these two men must face the truly evil police investigator "Portnov" (a spine-shivering contribution from Anatoly Solonitsyn) who tries to convince each man to tell what they know of their colleagues. The now injured "Sotnikov" has a proud and determined stoicism that he's prepared to take to the grave; his friend is a touch more pragmatic than him but both have consciences to wrestle with about not just their own lives, but those of others caught up in their fight for freedom. There's something very striking about Plotnikov here - it reminded me in many ways of Jeffrey Hunter in "King of Kings" (1961) - those piercing eyes and an almost celestial bearing as the photography focussed on a face that seemed to be able to project itself as a vision of something holy, better, virtuous. Indeed, the last twenty minutes or so have something of the Calgary to them that resonate really quite poignantly. The supporting cast, and a really quite provocative effort from Gostyukhin, also add a layer of characterful richness to a tale that questions just what people might be prepared to do to preserve their own, and/or other, lives. Is it braver to die for the cause or to compromise, maybe even collaborate, survive and fight another day? It's a cold film from start to finish and well worth a watch.