The second adaptation of the book. Apocalypse today. The novel "Tuntematon sotilas" ("Unknown Soldier") by Väinö Linna was published in late 1954 and immediately excited the entire Finnish society. The following year, the film adaptation was made, which for many years became the main Finnish film, which is shown on central television every year on December 6, Independence Day of Finland.
Thirty years later, the Finnish filmmakers made another adaptation of the novel The Unknown Soldier. Colored and at the same time darker and heavier.
Anti-war cinema of a single national culture cannot exist outside the world cultural context. And if the eastern neighbor of Finland, the Soviet Union, in anti-war cinema, paid the main attention to the Second World War and, first of all, the Soviet-German (Great Patriotic War), then the western neighbors - Europe and North America - to the so-called local wars that took place and are taking place in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola created perhaps the main anti-war film, Apocalypse Now. The main theme of this film is the madness that engulfs a man in war. The finale of the film “Apocalypse Now” is a stunning metaphor for the descent of the human soul to the abyss of insanity and madness and exit from it through humility, suffering and pain.
To be sure, Apocalypse Now has influenced (and still does) all future anti-war cinema. And not only about the war in Vietnam (and other local wars), but also about global wars.
In 1986, the Soviet film “Go and See” by Elem Klimov was released, in which the war appeared in such a merciless to the viewer angle that Soviet (and not only) anti-war cinema had never before known. The film with stunning humanistic and artistic merits became an event in Soviet society of that time and a film event in world cinema.
The same can not be said about the new adaptation of “The Unknown Soldier” in 1985. The movie wasn't an event. He did not have a strong artistic side. It turned out to be a good passing, respectful to the literary source, film adaptation.
One of the co-authors of the script was also Väinyo Linna, who had a good opportunity to make small changes to the story told in his book thirty years ago.
First, what draws attention at once to the fact that the age of the characters of the film corresponds to the age of the characters of the novel - these are young guys, recruits called to war. Secondly, the smooth impatient movement of the episodes in the film (where it is difficult to distinguish bright episodes), apparently conceived to more convincingly convey the mundaneness and inconspicuousness that takes place in the war, where transitions and waiting took the main time between short battles. All the events of the film are perceived as a long series of gray little memorable episodes.
And there are also episodes of naked nature (both male and female) to emphasize the fragility and defenselessness of people against this inhuman phenomenon, war.
My opinion is not bad.
6 out of 10