Anniversary of the Fortress of War

On June 22, 2010, the premiere of the film "Fortress of War" was simultaneously held at the Brest Fortress Memorial Complex in the Belarusian city of Brest and in Moscow, in the Oktyabr cinema. Director Alexander Kott.

The script of the film is based on the book of the famous Soviet writer Sergey Sergeyevich Smirnov, as well as on numerous memoirs of German soldiers and memoirs of the Wehrmacht general Guderian. Almost all the characters in the picture have real prototypes. The authors of the film strive for the most thorough, if not scrupulous, following of documentary sources provides a high degree of reliability of the film, which is very rare with historical films, in particular, with military films.

However, if desired, in any work of art you can find a certain amount of inaccuracies. Such a desire was manifested by a military historian with a mathematical education, Aleksei Isaev, who listed all the flaws found in a review entitled "Brest Fortress": cinema and Germans."

The number of countries where the movie "Fortress of War" was shown in cinemas is very limited: only the former Soviet republics, plus China. In some Western countries, the film was released only on DVD. In the USA, the film was not even allowed on DVD: the most severe American censorship cannot allow Americans to get acquainted with films about the participation of the Soviet Union in World War II. Especially if the film is so authentic.

The ideological considerations that guide American censorship are mixed with purely commercial protectionist ones. It is no coincidence that Australian film critic Don Groves, who accidentally happened to watch "Fortress of War" at the little-known Australian "Russian Resurrection Film Festival" in 2011, wrote in his review entitled "A remarkable true story of courage under fire": "Working with a relatively modest budget of $7 million, director Alexander Kott and his crew delivered a spectacular, deeply moving picture whose production values would rival any Hollywood production."

But with the exception of this Australian film festival and several others, just as little known, the film was deprived of the opportunity to participate in international foreign film festivals. But even in Russian film festivals, the film of Alexander Kott did not succeed, which it deserved. The jury of the Golden Eagle festival in 2011 preferred the film "How I Ended This Summer", and the jury of "Nika" in the same year awarded the victory to the film "Kray". Note that the ratings on Kinopoisk of both of the mentioned winning films do not even reach 7. But, apparently, the jury of Russian film forums are guided not by the opinion of the audience, but by completely different criteria and “incentives”.

Such decisions of such juries are served, among a few others, by Victor Matizen, at that time - president of the Guild of Film Experts and Film Critics of Russia. In his review, entitled "The First Joint Pancake", he wrote about the film: "The utmost limitation of the author’s position seems to be related to the fact that, according to rumors, fifteen generals of two allied states, whose task was not to give out military secrets of 60 years ago, controlled the production. As a result, the majority of the film’s time is consumed by small skirmishes, which, for the above reason, are filled with noise, rage and confusion, as well as rather intrusive panoramas across the battlefield dotted with dead bodies. " Here is such a principle and here is such a professional level of Russian film experts and film critics - to substantiate their reasoning with rumors.

However, estimations like the Matizen's one gave to the film are immeasurably less than positive reviews. Although, of course, quite a lot. But still, several times more those like the ones below.

Yuri Lushchinsky called "Fortress of War" "the best domestic modern film about the war".

Fedor Obzorkin described it as "One of the best post-Soviet Russian films about the Great Patriotic War. Honest, spectacular, without tears of traitors, without reasoning about specific human destinies."

According to Valery Kichin, “The film of Alexander Kott is primarily an act. In an era of total cynicism and denial, the director returns to the screen the idea of a feat, which in itself is brave ... The film “Fortress of War” is healing: it brings us back from the nonsense of pompous heroic inventions national scale to not so solemn, but the only human truth."

Dmitry Puchkov aka Goblin: “The film is heavy. Probably the first time in 20 years it’s really serious and correct. People in the audience are crying. Therefore, I don’t want to joke. The film “Fortress of War” must be watched. This is a good Soviet film."

Here is the impression of not a critic, but a simple spectator: “I don’t remember even once when after the premiere all spectators (every single one!) remained in their places as glued. Captions are coming. One minute, two, three ... and everyone is sitting without moving. Then - ... a burst of applause. The canvas of the screen turns white, the room lights up. Then everyone ... in a single impulse begin to applaud. And only then they slowly rise from their chairs and wander off. Right, another such case I don’t remember."

According to FilmGourmand, Alexander Kott's "Fortress of War" movie with a rating of 7,936 takes 810th place in the Golden Thousand.