Two Comrades Were Serving

The last days of the Russian Civil War. The Crimean peninsula is the last place left in White Army hands and the Red Army is preparing its final assault. The film moves along two lines. The first is the story of two Red Army soldiers who are nothing alike, Nekrasov and Karyakin. The second is that of Brusentsov, a White Army officer, attached to his cause and his country while watching all of it come apart day by day. Yevgeni Karelov's film does something unusual for Soviet cinema: it draws the officer on the other side as a human being too. Vladimir Vysotsky plays Brusentsov. Oleg Yankovskiy, Rolan Bykov and Anatoliy Papanov are also in the cast. The telling is less interested in battle scenes than in where the war brings a person.