Watch 100 Days Before the Command For Free

People are voting emotionally.

One of my all time favorites.

i must have seen a different film!!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A response to moronic reviewers.The majority of the bad reviews here come from America, where it seems there can be no positive reaction to beauty of image, poetry, or an understanding of Russian cinema. It is lamentable that this film does not get higher ratings, but then I sense homophobia to be at work. Arguably the Russians have got used to coded images in their films, especially towards the beauty of the young male face and figure. From Eisenstein, through 'Ballad of a Soldier' to 'Father and Son', and if homoeroticism is there, under a cruelly oppressive series of political regimes, the code is necessary for survival. America needs no codes, it just ignores positive representation, and those that exist get lost in independent gay film which rarely gets seen outside of festivals.This is a beautiful film. Watch it as you would read a poem. 'Mirror' by Tarkovsky is applauded as a masterpiece, and this film, in all its glorious mystery of image and action, stands, needing no comparison. There is a place beyond traditional meaning, and that place is the imagination, and of course it is not a film that releases all its meanings, subtexts and observations on Russian life to a reductive interpretation. The homophobia of some reviews is never quite stated, but is there; what is less obvious is an understanding of the profound inner soul of Russian cinema at its best.

A companion film to Come and See and The Guard, 100 Days Before The Command offers a very different rhythm and style to the war training film. Where films like Full Meal Jacket and Jarhead present the behavioural disintegration of their subjects, this film offers a more subconscious vision of where the personality goes when fragmented by the rigours of a depersonalising military command. This is not a film for viewers after a coherent narrative or a dialogue-driven journey, but for those brave enough to surrender their militant devotion to narrative film boundaries and spoon-fed cinematic experiences there is plenty here to explore. If films such as Father and Son excited your urge to introspection, this film will be a worthwhile venture. If a slowly evolving, visually commanding exploration of the male psyche and body in the Russian military and the relationship between men in such circumstances isn't where you are at I would settle for something less challenging.

I watched the film with my DVD player on double and sometimes quadruple speed and I don't think i missed a thing.Since when does the army(of any country)take the time to have each soldier laboriously sponge bath one another? Why, when a soldier comes into the barracks drunk and late while everybody is asleep, does he pee on another guys face? WHY DID EVERYBODY JUST STARE AT THE CAMERA!?!?!?!?!?! Yeah, there were some artistically done shots, but they were not enough to make up for the three minute shots of absolutely nothing happening. For instance the time when the soldiers were all standing in a group. The camera panned across there faces, which took like two minutes. Then when the camera got the end it started panning back in the other direction. The whole scene took like 5 minutes and and I didn't even recognize any of the people in it.I've seen a lot of art-house films and a lot of art and film in general in my life, but this film was just kinda boring.

This is, and I guess, will remain, an extremely underrated film. There is no chance that those of us who are just a little bit intellectually lazy will like it. The viewer's participation in creating (or re-creating) the plot is absolutely required, to an even higher extent than in Bertolucci's "Besieged". This short film consists of several disconnected vignettes from the life of the Red Army soldiers living, training, working - and let us not forget: washing themselves - on an army base. The country is deserted and the buildings are dilapidated, but everything is beautifully shot. The atmosphere is oneiric, the dreams and imaginations blend with the reality, thus resembling the works of the Master - Andrei Tarkovsky or the Disciple - Aleksander Sokurov. There is not much dialog, which leaves us on our own to interpret sometimes surrealistic happenings on the screen. As in many other soldier movies, the topic is the clash between individual's humanity and the inherent brutality of the system. The clash is treated very delicately, there is not a single scene of the direct physical violence in the movie. Yet, we witness - or infer, for that matter - hazing and several deaths on the camp. Although not an overly gay film, it is remarkably open in its homoerotic subtexts. In contrast, the scenes with direct nudity, like those in the showers or the pool, are devoid of eroticism. They are shot in a documentaristic style, but the beautiful sacral music of Johann Sebastian Bach gives them another meaning and elevates them to unanticipated heights. The film opens with a biblical motto and it is not a chance that the story of St. George battling the dragon appears twice in the movie. Another hint to a deeper meaning of the film is that two persons of the cast are named Death and Angel... As for the acting, there will be some that will not like it, but, incredibly, all the roles are played by real-life soldiers, except for one professional actor (guess which). Watching "Sto dnei do prikaza" (and I recommend to watch it multiple times ) is a strange, difficult, but rewarding experience.