My command of the Russian language is very poor, anyway I had little problems following this nail-biting and suspenseful story. I purchased the DVD, because a Russian friend of mine recommended it to me, after we talked about the movie "Come And See". This movie is very close to "Come And See" and also very close to "Franz And Polina". I believe the Russians have a lot of unresolved issues with this period of history: The resistance movement in Bjelorussia during WW2. This miniseries is a very good attempt to address the complexities of collaboration, betrayal, terror and counter-terror, sacrifice and opportunism. The acting is absolutely superb, no cliché's of evil German SS-Officers, this miniseries really tries to explain the reasoning that might have been behind those men. Let's not forget, there was a fuhrer's order to view upon the Russian population as inferior subhuman. For the more subtle ways of today, to dehumanize an enemy, this was the very crude style. But it worked, because people did not have "the check and balances" of the media of today. I was very impressed with the actress Agnes Zeltinya playing the NKVD agent Lida Eisenschmidt. Using a lot of female intuition, seduction and iron nerves to execute her mission. I really liked to have the space of over 400 minutes to see the characters develop, there was not one boring minute in this movie. Uniforms, weapons the period and the politics where well depicted and researched in detail. Something that you rarely see in Hollywood movies, where most current action movies are drowning in special effects and simplified story lines. The new Russian film is going a different direction, taking pride in the art of acting and the old fashion way of story telling. I have to admit, I'm addicted to the new Russian cinema. Now my criticism: I'm wondering why Russian movies are so purely marketed in the west, since the quality of those movies are really outstanding. Almost every new Russian movie-epic comes without English subtitles, so I get so tired of waiting, that I have to watch them without them. It seems that it might take forever, for the Russian studios to release English versions of "Doctor Zhivago (2006)", "Quiet flows the Don (2006)" , "Svoi (2004)", "Gibel Imperij (2005)", "Yonkera(2007)", "The Nine Lives Of Nestor Machnow (2006)" and many, many more.
