My Unknown Soldier

A sad and rare reminder of the soldiers of the occupation and an indictment of collective guilt, culminating in a harrowing account of the Slovakian lynching of a Ukrainian woman after the troops arrived. The focus here is on the oft-neglected fact that the soldiers who invaded Czechoslovakia under orders had it drummed into their heads that they were going to suppress an armed fascist counterrevolution, and upon arrival experienced such utter disillusionment that led to the demoralized men had to be sent back and replaced after the first week. The film focuses on their bewildered faces, despondent with the knowledge that they would not be greeted as their fathers had been with kisses and flowers, but with hatred and misunderstanding. In the moments when the film just doles out footage of August 21 and follows the expressions of the occupiers, it is at its strongest. The problem arises again with the director’s voice over, because I have trouble with the personal input of young writers, who simply always come off as self-important greenhorns. Among other things, the documentary's method thus somewhat obscures the fact that while its promise is a certain search through history for someone's fate, the whole quest seems to be that one day the director learns about the unknown soldier and another day her mother tells her who he was. However, that reconciliation in the gloom at the end was strangely functional for me (also thanks to the excellent, dark, ambient soundtrack). (11/16/2018)