A good movie

Since this movie had a really solid reputation (it is included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list among other things), I was quite eager to check it out. For some time now, I have been watching some Soviet movies but this one was easily one of the most intriguing I have seen so far. First of all, the first thing that impressed me was the editing. Indeed, except for a couple of scenes with a rather poor transition, it was actually really tight and super effective, especially compared to most of the other Soviet movies I have seen recently. The other interesting aspect of this movie was that it gave a really different perspective on the Russian revolution. If this perspective was actually accurate, of course, it’s a different story though. I have to admit it, it’s only afterwards that I understood that the soldiers in Mongolia were actually British but, in fact, the British were never in Mongolia back then. Anyway, Russia was, and still is, a huge country including so many various peoples and cultures and it was really  interesting to see the Russian revolution and civil war from a different point of view, even if the end-result was hardly objective since it was a propaganda piece. The approach chosen was that, even at the far corners of Mongolia, there was also a class struggle taking place and the people also had to rise up against the capitalist oppressor. Unfortunately, as usual with such Soviet propaganda movies, the characters were not developed whatsoever but something that bothered me even more was the randomness of the whole thing but it is also inherent to the genre, I’m afraid. Anyway, to conclude, it was a really intriguing movie and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.