Trial on the Road

Winter 1942, Russia under German occupation. A man comes to a partisan group wanting to surrender: Lazarev, a Soviet soldier who was captured and went over to the Germans. He wants to come back. The group divides; the commander wants to give him a chance, the commissar calls him a traitor and wants him shot. Lazarev is given a mission. Aleksei German directs, from a story by his father Yuri German. The real story of the film is what happened to it. Finished in 1971, it was shelved by Soviet censorship for describing the war and the partisans from somewhere other than heroism. It could not be shown until 1986, under glasnost. For fifteen years nobody saw it. The subject is betrayal and forgiveness. The film does not clear Lazarev and does not present him as a traitor either; the actual matter is the others deciding how to look at him. The commissar is outside the type. His hardness is built as fear rather than malice; he is himself afraid of making a mistake. German's known manner is here: crowded frames, mud, snow, and a picture of war without ornament. The bridge sequence and the barge passage are the most cited parts. Who it is for: viewers who like Soviet war cinema and films that break the heroic narrative. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the characters are hard to tell apart, and the film gives no relief anywhere.