(I)
By the winter of 1944, the Soviet Army had liberated the entire Soviet Union and counterattacked on all fronts, and the advance guard had entered German territory, leaving the unforgiving Germans with their wives and children.
Bavaria. The German army trains a line of soldiers who are about to head into battle, a line that whirls towards the rising smoke. Major Klee Kivens looked at his young wife and daughter, “I’m coming back to spend Christmas with you.” The daughter raised her eyes to him, “Would you bring me a postcard?” The father replied, “Yes, I will.”
No one could have imagined that the postcard would arrive eight years later.
A film set against the backdrop of war, which skips over the sound of trenches and gunfire – a Soviet military tribunal, the presiding judge announces that the defendant, accused of war crimes, has been sentenced to 25 years of hard labor.
Cape Deneve Prison, located in the Arctic Circle, on the west coast of the Bering Strait. Thousands of kilometers from the nearest town, the entire prison is not even fenced in, because there is no need for it: the only way to escape is to freeze to a pile of ice on the ice field at -40 degrees. People die here every day, and the doctors have nothing to do, their only job being to issue death notices.
The rest of the story can be imagined, and Givens remembers his daughter asking for a postcard.
The first escape attempts fail. Kevins was locked in an upright-only sewer for days, but to everyone’s surprise, he didn’t die. He grabbed the prison doctor, Dr. Starko, by the horns and said, “You have to save me, I want to go home.”
“You’re not far from home, 10,000 miles away ……”
Cape Deneuve Prison is a hellhole that not even the prison doctor wants to be in. Starko is also carefully preparing for an escape, but when he learns that he has cancer and can no longer complete his escape, he leaves the route he has devised, the food he has prepared, and the hope of survival to Kivens.
This part reminds me of Dondace in The Count of Monte Cristo. Of course, I think “The Wild Hunt” is also inspired by “The Polar Regeneration”, and even the American drama “Prison Break”, which was released a few years ago? So, in a plot so tense and exciting, yet cold and passionate, how could the tough Givens not have a worthy opponent?
Soviet Captain Schiff has only one expression in the film, that of cruelty and arrogant indifference, and he and Kievens have one thing in common: they do not change their goals once they are set.
For a week, all the guards have nothing to show for their efforts, and almost every one of them is sure that Kievens has frozen to death somewhere between the hills and the grass. Only Schiff, who by the end of the film is as convinced as he is that he will not stop until he has achieved his goal, is braving the freezing temperatures of -40 degrees Celsius on foot through the endless expanses of Siberia, gritting his teeth. Schiff got his gear and set off.
(ii)
As allies in World War II, China, the U.S., and the U.K. received all kinds of propaganda and messages, even movies, that focused on the fearlessness of the positive side and the brutality of the negative side, but reason dictates that any game is a game of suffering and torment for both sides. Films that truly analyze war and human nature from the negative’s perspective are always refreshing in their originality. If you are interested in Japanese post-war scar films, you might want to look for a few of them to see, as the oriental finesse ensures that you will not be disappointed with Japanese films.
The German people are rigorous and tough by nature. After the war, the four great German filmmakers such as Karl Meru, Fritz, etc. have reorganized the spiritual core of the German nation into an epic. Especially in war films, after being used to the defeats of Japan and Germany on the battlefield, “The Polar Regeneration” is a truly applaudable film. It directly neglects the judgment of the war itself and the measurement of values, but places it on the background of the war, starting from the subject of “people”, and excavates the essence of human nature after the war. After all, there is a right and a wrong in war, and human nature is never wrong, and it is a universal information code.
For reasons we all know, the distance between German cinema and China seems to be too great. In the war genre, Japan and Germany are “alike”, but because of their cultural and geographical proximity, and even the continued fever of “anti-war dramas”, Chinese people can more or less watch Japanese war scars, but German films are obscure.
But at the Oscars, there is no shortage of German sophistication and grandeur. In The Arctic Rebirth, the director skillfully bypasses the accusation of war, even without comment, and goes straight to the analysis of spirituality beyond the guns and roses. The angle, the approach, the idea, and even the use of various artistic means of the film are all exquisite. In the film, the protagonist is helped by Soviet hunters, Owenks, Jews, and other ethnic groups, making the world feel warmer than 40 degrees below zero for a movie, and trying to say sorry to the world through the film itself – even though the Germans had the most inhumane destruction of the Jews, and the director of the film is the only one who can say sorry to the world. The plot of the protagonist’s rescue by the Jews is even a subtle form of “atonement,” allowing a German war movie to gain worldwide recognition without evoking the desire for judgment and hostility.
This German refinement pales in comparison to Chinese cinema, which appears to have been too careless and too eager for quick success.
(iii)
Although it is two and a half hours long, it is a wonderful visual feast that retains the audience’s patience. The film has won more than ten world awards, including the Outstanding Achievement Award at the American International Film Festival and Best Actor at the Milan Film Festival, and has been recognized by the entire world, including the hostile nation of Germany during World War II. This is due to the film’s neutral point of view, which is so important that no one will pay attention to words like Nazi or invasion, but rather feel the resonance of human nature in every second of tension and excitement – a fugitive who strives to cross 14,000 kilometers of frozen wilderness, and a hunter and killer who is equally tough and determined to escape! ……
After the audience had been seated for two hours, Kivens arrived at the Soviet-Iranian border, and after crossing the bridge, it seemed that he could enter the safe zone. Kevins, holding back his excitement, stepped toward the bridge, and a bright light suddenly appeared across the bridge.
Kivens looked up, and there on the bridge was the cold gaze of Schgoff. The Soviet soldier behind him, the hunter who had been chasing him for ten thousand kilometers in front of him, the raging river under the bridge, the five years in prison, the three years on the run, and all that had gone up in smoke at this moment?
Schgoff actually turned sideways to make way for the fugitive, who had nowhere else to go. The moment he passed Schgoff, the latter said softly with his usual arrogance.
“The final victory is still mine. ……”
It is a conversation from one soldier to another, from one soldier who is dedicated to his duty by order of his country to another soldier who is also dedicated to his country.
The vocation of the soldier is common to the world: to follow orders, to serve, and to be loyal. In this respect, both the pursuer and the fugitive have taken it to the extreme. Two equally determined men who refused to bow down to defeat, in a fight to the death, were sympathetic to each other.
The 10,000-kilometer journey home, the two men and a number of related and unrelated people, the warmth of the snow and wind for two and a half hours, the details of a postcard that one does not forget to look for in the midst of a life-or-death struggle, and the unique way of switching shots in the last twenty minutes without music or dialogue but in montage style. Returning home becomes one man’s ultimate goal, while another man’s goal is to catch him …… The greatness of humanity lies in learning to forgive, just as the whole world forgave Germany, Japan, Italy, and just as Schgoff finally let Givens live. And the whole point of a movie is to learn to forgive and fight without asking the root of the sin.
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