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Very disappointing...

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It goes without saying that silent cinema requires emphasis on the imagery. Alexander Dovzhenko's "Arsenal" is no exception. The look back at World War I over the past year should draw attention to this movie. Like Lewis Milestone's "All Quiet on the Western Front", this movie looks at the futility of war. The focus in the Kiev Arsenal January Uprising in 1918. Probably the most effective scene is the laughing gas: a man artificially laughs while surrounded by all manner of horror, a perfect metaphor for the disconnect between the image and reality of war.The only other Dovzhenko movie that I've seen is "Earth". I understand that "Arsenal" and "Earth" are the second and third installments of his Ukraine Trilogy. I'll have to see "Zvenigora", as well as the rest of Dovzhenko's movies. Despite the obvious propaganda, this is still a movie that you have to see just for the imagery if nothing else. Like Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin", it contains some of the most unforgettable images in cinema history. Definitely see it.

I'm having a difficult time coming to grips with Arsenal. The film follows a coherent narrative: a WWI soldier, Timosh, returns from the front to his hometown in Ukraine and sides with the Bolshevik workers in his former factory against a nationalistic anti-Soviet uprising. However, the story lacks narrative logic in a way that bugged me – a train carrying demobilized soldiers stops, the train is threatened by nationalist soldiers, the train starts again, the train has faulty brakes, the train crashes – scenes occur without any particular regard to the preceding context or the overall storyline. Add to this a dash of avant-garde styling – images of people apparently frozen in place, strange camera angles – and the effect is quite disorienting. Thematically and ideologically, though, the film is successful. Arsenal is remarkably even handed with regards to the conflict between the nationalists and the Bolsheviks. In one scene, a Ukrainian soldier laments "three hundred years of Russian oppression," to which a Russian soldier quite reasonably asks, "What did I do?" A frustrated peasant attacks his gaunt horse, to which the intertitles respond, "You're hitting the wrong one, Ivan." Ukrainian aggression against the Soviets is depicted as misguided, rather than malicious. All people, not just Ukrainians or Russians, are shown mourning and starving at the hands of the Germans and the negligent Tsar at the beginning of the film. Timosh's decision to side with the communists over the nationalists is not divisive; in the end he identifies himself as "a Ukrainian worker" to a nationalist squad, whose bullets he miraculously survives. Communism is universal, and the Bolsheviks do not deserve to be the target of nationalistic ire stirred by the Imperial era. The metaphor is obvious, but is refreshingly unintrusive for a revolutionary film. Arsenal is not easy to watch, but has more complexity to it than one might expect from a work of state-sanctioned cinema.

Don't be discouraged by this Soviet film's age or obscurity - it is one of the finest movies ever made, and it stands alongside Carl Theodore Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," as the most modernist film of the 1920's. This is a spectacular visual achievement, and its visionary conception of cinema is moderinism that we've still failed to catch up with. Unlike most recognized masterpieces of Soviet silent cinema (e.g. "The Battleship Potempkin," "Earth," "The End of St. Petersburg," etc.), however, "Arsenal" is a surprisingly approachable film, and its strangeness and abstraction are consistently fascinating. Originally intended as a propaganda film, "Arsenal" is the second component of director Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," and it details an episode in the Russian Civil War (~1918) in which the Kiev Arsenal workers aided the Bolshevik army against the ruling Central Rada. Dovzhenko's approach is somewhat similar to Sergei Eisentein, in that he relied heavily on montage, but his pace was less frenetic, and his Expressionism was more exaggerated. As detailed in the film's academic commentary, Dovzhenko was previously a political cartoonist, and you can see traces of this background in "Arsenal." The characters in this film are caricatures, sometimes grotesque and sometimes funny. Similarly, there is a strangeness and remoteness in "Arsenal," which makes the film's few intentionally lucid passages quite dreamlike. The DVD commentary is concise and informative, and a terrific primer for the first time viewing. If you have any interest in silent cinema, modernism, or film as art, "Arsenal" is a film you SHOULD NOT MISS. ---|--- Was this review helpful?

While I have seen and enjoyed similar movies to this one that were silent films about the Russian Revolution, such as POTEMKIN and TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, I did not particularly enjoy this one. This was mostly due to the annoying and "artsy" way that the director chose to shoot the film. While POTEMKIN excelled in its editing style, this movie used similar techniques with a lot less finesse--in some places, the editing seemed very choppy and amateurish. Plus, and this was truly annoying, the use of zombies throughout the beginning of the film and late in the film really was over-the-top. What I mean by "zombies" is that to illustrate just how depressed and oppressed the Ukranian peasants were, the people stand like mannequins in many scenes. And, they stand like this, unmoving, for a VERY long period of time, while the "evil" Capitalists and exploiters of the masses walk by. Gimme a break! This movie is a wonderful example of style over substance--and it's only a movie for those who enjoy or can overlook the overindulgent direction.By the way, the DVD for this film is improved, somewhat, if you leave the audio commentary on. This makes the movie easier to follow and gives a few interesting insights.