Criterion Corner: The Ascent (1977) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Mosfilm

 

By now you’ve probably heard of Russian director Elem Klimov’s legendary WWII cinematic and hallucinatory waking nightmare Come and See thanks to the Criterion Collection’s recently re-released blu-ray edition, cementing the film’s status as an indefatigable film monument of formidable size and unspeakable horrors contained therein.  But what you may not be aware of is that before embarking on his unforgettable 1985 Mosfilm modern classic is that Klimov was married to the equally towering presence of a film director named Larisa Shepitko and that she beat her husband to the finish line with her savage and bleak 1977 WWII drama The Ascent.  
 
Also recently re-released by Criterion in a new 4K restored special edition, the Golden Bear winner would turn out to be her last film before a tragic motor vehicle accident claimed her life.  With this newly restored blu-ray edition, Shepitko’s status is firmly cemented as one of the world’s greatest female directors who ever lived with The Ascent arguably being the best film ever made by a woman.  Considered to be one of the finest late Soviet cinema films to emerge from Mosfilm, the film is at once a painful visceral physical endurance as well as a transcendent and ethereal religious experience or passion play as cinema.
 
In the throes of the Second World War, two soldiers Sotnikov (Boris Plotnikov) and Rybak (Vladimir Gostyukhin) are foraging for supplies and food in a Belarusian village.  Heading back to their unit with a farm animal for food, they’re spotted by German patrols who hunt them down in a tense extended chase through the harshness of the woods and snow in scenes that are as painful to watch as it must have been for the poor actors out in the elements to film.  After Sotnikov is wounded in the leg, Rybak drags them both to safety in the shelter of a mother of three named Demchikha (Lyudmila Polyakova).  However, their hideout is only temporary when they are soon discovered by German forces and their real ordeal begins.

Courtesy of Mosfilm

 
Based on the novel Sotnikov by Nobel Prize nominee Vasil Bykaŭ and spoken of the same breath as fellow Russian cinema genius Andrei Tarkovsky with a dash of Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer sprinkled in, The Ascent is an exquisite and transcendent foray into the moment a person transcends the horrors of their immediate ordeal into that of spiritual enlightenment.  A morality play laying all the cards on the table as collaborator Portnov (Anatoli Solonitsyn) systematically grills the prisoners for information as the stakes are raised and tortures come into play, the film is spoken of the same breath as Alexander Dovzhenko’s pioneering silent film Earth for capturing earthly beauty interspersed with man’s horrific capacity for evil as well as great love.
 
Lensed ornately and distantly by two cinematographers, Vladimir Chukhnov and Pavel Lebeshev, and aided by an ethereal and hauntingly ambient score by legendary composer Alfred Schnittke whose music continues to be used in films today including most recently The Lobster, The Ascent looks and sounds exquisite.  With particular focus on the contours of the human face in tense harrowing close-ups including one unforgettable vista of Sotnikov staring at the sky as his body is dragged towards a concentration camp, you are thrust knee deep into the Hell these characters are living out.
 
Performance wise the actors are put through the gamut such as a strenuous hard-to-watch sequence where Rybak drags Sotnikov’s wounded and limp body caked in frost and snow through the prickly and jagged branches of the woods.  While we’re spared such horrors as branding, we basically get to see these poor actors crawling on their hands and knees through difficult and uncomfortable terrain towards an uncertain fate.  Still, this isn’t an endurance test of how much suffering you can take as a viewer.  Rather it becomes about the point where these characters (and we) find grace of spirit and peace of mind as they slowly career towards a dark fate.  Their destination is one thing but how they choose to feel about it is something else entirely.

Courtesy of Mosfilm

 
A transcendent audiovisual experience of pure cinema, the Russian New Wave and echoing the earthy religious allegories of the aforementioned Dovzhenko, The Ascent strives to find peace, enlightenment and even beauty in the middle of an unforgiving horror show.  Unlike Come and See which saw man crumbling and buckling at his joints underneath the insurmountable weight of post-traumatic-stress-disorder, The Ascent instead sees man finding a way to overcome and transcend the agonies of his current existence and presents something of a Christ-allegory deep within the bowels of Nazi-occupied Belorussia.  Most of all it is a testament to the human spirit finding a way to emerge unscathed from a violent and brutal world beating down upon it: a cinematic passion play of the highest order!

--Andrew Kotwicki