Customer Reviews

100 Days Before the Command

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Enigmatic and at sometimes a surreal film about the day to day monotomy and futility of the lives of a group of conscript Russian soldiers. The film is stark and bare, the actors largely former recruits and the film style moves from dream sequences to fly on the wall documentary.

Its hardly surprising this film was banned in the then Soviet Union - its harsh and disturbing view of conscript life is unreservedly critical, the visual presentation is almost hauntingly homo-erotic at times and as such the film isn't going to be a hit with authorities trying to conscript youths to military service where military life is marked by its drabness, un-ending boredom and the use of humiliation and bullying.

The acting is naturalistic and realistic, the players gritty and real. The viewer is left in no doubt that national service behind the Iron Curtain was neither glamourous nor particularly pleasant.

Well worth a spin if your into foreign films and like a challenging film, not for those who like Top Gun or Stripes.

Some may be looking for deep symbolism in "100 Days".
One reviewer called it surreal.

It is very realistic actually, almost a documentary
about a real problem in Soviet and Russian society:
low morale and brutal treatment of recruits in an
Army dogged by a failed war in Afghanistan and the
collapse of the Soviet Union. To this day today's
Russian military has faced accusations of atrocities
committed in Grozny, Chechnya, which had been
tragic for both Russians and Chechens.

There have been Red Army scandals involving the
deaths of young men at the hands of criminally
sadistic officers and NCOs. Drug abuse, alcohol
and even male prostitution have been known to occur
on Army bases.

In one incident, commanding officers got recruits
to perform sexual services for a third party while
the officers took payment. There have been rapes
and desertion and suicide is not any surprising
event.

Just to escape the stultifying army environment,
recruits had been known to get high off their
boot polish. Many have gone blind from such
dangerous activity.

Viewers of "100 Days" who attempt to make sense of
all the nudity and strange broken down landscape
shouldn't trouble themselves too much. Such places
and activities literally did exist and were not such
uncommon sites around 1990.

The boys rubbing eachother down nude is not just
some bizarre symbolism. Men of all ages did and
still do rub eachother down in the age old Russian
tradition of the "Banya" or communal bath and sauna.
To some Westerners it may look "gay" but it really
is a traditional Russian cultural phenomenon.

The broken down, abandoned looking landscape was
not a surreal movie set designed for effect. Soviet
army bases were horribly dilapidated as much of Soviet
society was at the point of collapse.

The translations are indeed peculiar as one review points
out.

The original Russian title "Sto Dnej Do Prikaza" should
actually be translated as "A Hundred Days 'Til Orders Arrive"
(i.e. Orders to get discharged or move on to another
place)

The producers maybe should have prefaced the film with some
background on Soviet/Russian society and culture back in 1990
so the realistic episodes of the film would not seem meaningless
and "surreal."

Excellent movie. The film quality and color were above average. It is a somewhat surreal look at young men enduring life in a typical Russian boot camp setting. Haunting and powerful. You will want to watch this movie more than once. You will understand why this movie was banned in Russia. Not exactly a recruiting tool for the Red Army.

It's always wonderful to see European films that portray nakedness in a natural, non-pornographic setting; what a refresher from the average "American-Pie" films which I find phony. Furthermore, I myself am a Slavic person (born in the US)so I felt right at home with the movie, even though Communist oppression has never been conducive to the sensitive human spirit which is very much candidly seen in the young faces and eyes of the young boys in the film. It's also very refreshing to view a film where young boys are comfortable being naked with each other, without all the sexual shallowness very much associated with nudity in many other films. Watching this movie made me feel good and at home. It's only a shame that this film did not have a concise plot; it was a little on the messy and surreal side.

At this moment in our history we need all the input about the multiple facets of the hideous War Machine that has an apparent strangle hold on every country on the planet. In this Russian meditation, 100 DAYS BEFORE THE COMMAND, we are shown the behind-locked-doors view of youth preparing to become soldiers and leaders of soldiers. On the surface the director's eye seems to be telling us that 'boot camp' for these VERY young appearing boys is no more than a summer camp experience. But then he gradually shows the darker, terrifying side of what preparing these innocents for war produces - suffering, self-doubt, death, alienating behaviour, dreams and nightmares. There is an incredible sense of innocence in the eyes of these youth, and a groping for comradery that lightly brushes on eroticism. The multiple nude scenes seem to be offending more people than the Russian censors, but they are some of the more tender and tangible scenes in this meandering film about questioning our place and mindsets in the propagation of war leaders. Of note, in this very Russian film, the music used in the background is all Bach - excerpts form the Passions, cantatas - instead of works by Russian composers. This adds another dimension to this apparent 'paean' for world peace. This film is not for everyone, especially not for those who still have difficulty with male nudity.........

Created at a brink of collapse of the USSR, in a late Gorbachev epoch, this work is as gloomy as a disillusioned life of locals found them betrayed and short of a long-promised communist happy future was.

Juxtaposition of the army barracks with the life surrounding leaves more for viewers' imaginations than screened, in the usual Russian tradition of liberties censored far beyond a date of this movie-making.

It is hard to understand particulars/a plot of a story from segments graphically over exaggerating a general landscape of brutality and carelessness macho-culture is famous for in general, in a regiment of 18-20-old conscripts especially.

Factually, erotics (taboo for Soviet artists), strong homoeroticism and s&m hints are the most specific features securing a place apart this Soviet produce possessed among then local movies.

This director mistakes lame attempts at surrealism for art. Artsy-fartsy disjointed and meaningless scenes leave the viewer benumbed and wondering what this movie is about. Speaking Russian is no help in discovering the point of this wan effort.

A warning for future viewers: this film is PLOTLESS. There is no storyline here, no evolution of drama, no escalation of conflict, no central characters, no resolution. It comes off partially as a documentary, but as others have noted, it is filmed in such a surrealistic way it can not be called a documentary at all. There are long and lingering shots of nothing of interest, perhaps meant to add tone or mood to the film, but to what point? There is a sunset shot over water, land, and clouds that is repeated a number of times to convey the passing of time??? but it's the same cloud everyday!

That being said, the range of responses by Amazon viewers show that some deeply appreciate the film, some see a bit of value in it, while others find it mostly untenable. Some in their reviews have shared insights into eastern European culture and into Russian/Soviet military life which helped me to understand some aspects of this film. But overall the film fails to successfully convey its point. Whether you like this film or not will be entirely dependent on your own tastes, but it is an unconventional portrayal that made little sense to me.

After viewing this DVD, I can't help but feel that I want my hour back (and my $26). The film, while ostensibly tries to convey some sense of the malevolence of a Soviet military academy, fails miserably. The quality of film is also greatly disappointing--very grainy, dark to the point of inability to see, etc...

There is a dearth of dialogue, and the subtitles translate less than half of what is being said. Even so, as stated previously, I doubt this would matter, since the characters say so very little in the first place that I severely doubt anything of profound significance is even there to begin with. When the characters do speak, the camera is often not on them, and it is impossible to determine who is speaking, though, this does not matter, since what they say is of very little importance.

However, the lack of dialogue is not inherently bad in a movie, as I have seen many films that pull it off beautifully. 100 Days is definitely not one of those films. The translations are clumsy, almost rediculous; "stop goggling at me!" is a phrase thrown around often, which is just asinine, considering this never occured in the film (as far as the viewer is concerned). To compensate for the lack of dialogue, the director tries--unsucessfully--to create a story from the imagery. Painful does not begin to describe having to watch his clumsy juxtapositions of scenes; they seem more like editing errors than an attempt at valid film making.

The movie plods along, meandering aimlessly: there is no plot, no conflict that is apparent. Everything is so subtle, that it's to the point of non-existence. The attempt to make it into art failed. The several shots of the sunset failed to convey any point, and the repeated references to the slaying of the dragon was not hashed out far enough to make it valid.

Pointless, plodding. That is the only description I can fit to this film. Based on reviews, and the premise, I was truly looking forward to this film; However, it is bleak, uninteresting, and doesn't get any more interesting than the first scene, which is a good intro to the film: 5 minutes of staring into the gray countryside. There were seveal suicide scenes in the film; if the point was to drive its viewers to suicide (for having wasted their time watching such a mediocre "film"), it has succeeded, but only in that regard.

This is one creative way in which to recoup some of the loss incurred by buying this nightmare. If you are one of the unfortunate who rent this waste of time(like I was) recommend that your local video store make one empty space on their shelves and toss this loser. This 71 minute "experience", which feels more like 100 Days of Viewing Hell, is nothing more then a montage of artsy, disjoined, surreal scenes. It quickly becomes boring after the first 5 minutes, tedious after 10 minutes, and downright irritating at around 15 minutes. I actually made the mistake of suffering through to the end, hoping that something magical would happen to make everything half-way understandable. This film could only appeal to the rare, artistically elite, filmgoer who finds anything as superficial as character development or cumbersome as plot layout simply uninspiring.