Russia's Full Metal Jacket

In the mid-1990s, MosFilm - Russia's biggest movie studio - was turning out less than 10 films a year, about equal to the number of movie screens in all of Moscow (which had a population over 20 million). Today, there are multiplexes all over the city, MosFilm expects to produce over 150 TV shows and movies this year, and the Russian film industry is booming. A pair of recent films have been the high-profile face of the turnaround: Night Watch, a sci-fi/horror extravaganza, and Company 9, a sobering fictional look at the Soviet Union's disastrous 10 year war in Afghanistan.

The week it opened, Company 9 made $9 million, breaking all of Russia's box office records. Given that the film addresses an embarrassing, muddled military venture without any of the previous-generation's "imposed patriotism or sentimentalization," this is an impressive achievement indeed.
 
The film, directed by a Soviet Army vet, invites comparisons to Full Metal Jacket not only because of its trajectory (both take recruits from a brutal boot camp into the chaos of combat) but also because of the parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan. The similarities between the conflicts are striking (both were ill-advised and poorly-run, and veterans of both wars were often dismissed or even scorned upon their returns home), and have been noticed by not only outside observers but by those who served, as well.

Interestingly, in addition to bringing Afghanistan to the the forefront of the Russian consciousness for the first time, the film has had a broader, modern impact as well. Much like Robert Altman's MASH was about the Korean War but also - unavoidably - about Vietnam, Company 9 is impossible to watch without thinking of the endless Russian war in Chechnya. Said one critic, "This film is about any war where people don't understand what they are dying for. The audience remembers Afghanistan, but they also see Chechnya."

Though neither Company 9 nor Night Watch (which has already been seen all over Europe) has an American distributor, we can at least take comfort from the fact that, at long last, Russian cinema seems to be back.