The first impression I got from this film, is that they couldn't decide whether they wanted to make a documentary or a fiction film. They ended up trying to make fiction, while adding too many details in some places (narrative documentary style), and adding no details whatsoever in other places. This film is hard to follow even if you have knowledge about Lithuanian partisan movements to start with; if you don't, then I should expect there will be a great number of scenes where you will simply not understand what the hell is going on.
Not understanding what's going on leads to the second problem. maybe from not being able to decide if it would be a documentary or a fiction, they forgot to write a script. This is not a biopic. You don't follow a main character through a clearly defined story. They wanted to make a movie about partisans, and had no idea how to do it. They more or less try to follow a historical character - it took me about half of the film to understand that he was the main character (and I only guessed it because the actor - though I don't understand why - is famous in Lithuania).I still wasn't too certain about it for some time.
Most of the film is a succession of caricatures. Noble partisans who say "we have to fight for our freedom", against vulgar and violent Russians who say "Stalin" every two words. This problem though, is completely secondary to you not understanding what the hell is going on because there is almost no plot. Actually, it kind of helps, because at least you can identify the "good" and "bad" guys... more or less.
A lot of the film consists of shots of partisans, hiding and being dramatic. there isn't that much action either - not that many confrontations... not much of anything.
Afterwards you have problems that are so recurrent in modern Lithuanian cinema, that it's really astounding how none of their critiques have piqued up on it yet. One of the main problems is that you don't make movies like you make theatre. The actors play the way you would play on stage, not the way you play on a set. people who haven't studied the matter won't necessarily understand what I mean, but it makes a big difference. The director is not either a film director in my opinion - he's a theatre director who got a camera and some budget at some points. He films OK, but you can see that he directs the whole things as if it were theatre. it doesn't help of course that Lithuania has no film school, and that most of these people probably did just study theatre.
The film quality - though sometimes adding some sort of an old movie charm in some shots - is surprisingly bad. This comes maybe from the fact that this is the first Lithuanian film that was filmed with digital. This raises the question though; was it filmed with a handy-cam? You can also still noticed that it was made to be in black and white, and that it's not a "legit" old film, if one can say it like that.
You can watch this film if you really want to, or if you are interested in Lithuanian cinema (the good mark this film has probably comes from patriots not wanting to lower the mark too much). I would not recommend it though - there are much better Lithuanian films. This one might be remembered because it tries to be a historic film, though it really doesn't deserve to live on. The main problem is of course the lack of a scenario, the will to put in too many elements that completely lose the viewer, the incoherence in a lot of storyboard elements, and so on. To be honest, I feel a bit generous giving it 3, and not lower. I guess the costumes were good.
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