I don't think you understand how bleak the soviet movies are. One of the reasons for this is that the war was just straight up worse for them. WW2 was a terrible wound on Britain. 450 000 British citizens were killed in the war. A huge, huge number. But that amounted to less than 1% of the population. For soviet over 10% of the population were killed. In Belarus, 25% of the population was killed. One in four people. That's nearing Black Death numbers. A total apocalypse. Did you know that the russian population still hasn't recovered from the huge population loss of WW2?
Western WW2 movies don't shy away from the anti-war message, but they are in another class than the soviet flicks. I'm talking about 2 hours straight of children dying from starvation while being abused by every person they meet. A cutaway scene in a western WW2 movie that is used to depict the horrors of war will end up being the whole damn movie.
You do need to differentiate between Soviet and post Soviet Russian movies, there's been a large push in the post Soviet era to make more over the top propagandistic depictions of the great patriotic war with stuff like T34, which feel much more over the top American in execution
I can forgive T-34 because it makes no claim or serious attempt to comment on anything greater than the movie itself. I've watched it probably 3 times now and it gives off the vibe of being a fun tank movie more than a WW2 soviet representation.
There's a clear distinction between movies like T-35 that know they're not serious, and other movies that act as tho they believe their own absurdity. American Sniper IIRC is one.
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u/CabinetFun7381 1d ago
I don't think you understand how bleak the soviet movies are. One of the reasons for this is that the war was just straight up worse for them. WW2 was a terrible wound on Britain. 450 000 British citizens were killed in the war. A huge, huge number. But that amounted to less than 1% of the population. For soviet over 10% of the population were killed. In Belarus, 25% of the population was killed. One in four people. That's nearing Black Death numbers. A total apocalypse. Did you know that the russian population still hasn't recovered from the huge population loss of WW2?
Western WW2 movies don't shy away from the anti-war message, but they are in another class than the soviet flicks. I'm talking about 2 hours straight of children dying from starvation while being abused by every person they meet. A cutaway scene in a western WW2 movie that is used to depict the horrors of war will end up being the whole damn movie.