Freedom is true and false Synopsis: Spring of 1950. In the lost somewhere near the Irkutsk camp of prisoners of war comes a new Deputy Alexander Zeydenvar with his young wife Elena, who should take the post of interpreter. For a Jewish woman born in Vienna, who miraculously managed to survive in a concentration camp, it is difficult to find herself behind barbed wire again, and the woman is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, from an informant among prisoners of war, the camp leadership becomes aware of the impending escape. The head of the Fuzov camp proposes to prevent it with the help of repressive measures, while Zeydenvar believes that it makes no sense to harden former enemies and persuades his commander to include potential rebels in the nearest batch of repatriated refugees.
Surprisingly, filmed in West Germany in the wake of the war, the film about the fate of German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union turned out to be much more humane and honest than the “Escape from the Gulag” that appeared on screens in the early XXI-th century, seemingly raising the same topic. Here's the key word here: "likely." Leopold Lahola’s film, shot less than 10 years after the return of the last German soldiers of World War II, is not about the horrors of the camps. In fact, the only nightmare here is the lack of freedom that all prisoners dream of. And about this freedom, internal and external, and tells the sad and sincere story of the Czech Director.
In "The Devil Playing the Balalaika" there is no notorious "cranberry". The only thing that can be counted as the usual “Western” stamp here is the name of the picture. Everything else is the most accurate and accurate reproduction of the realities: everyday camp life, in which the administration practically does not interfere, leaving control over what is happening to the mercy of the prisoners themselves. Among them, as usual, there are those who work closely with the authorities, there are informal leaders and there is a majority who do not take sides. At the same time, the main character of the tape from the German side, Peter Joost, belongs to the same, the third group - to people patiently waiting for their turn for repatriation. However, his authority with other prisoners forces the leaders of the “rebels” who are plotting to escape from the camp to turn to Peter for help, putting him in a difficult moral dilemma.
The second storyline of the film is a hidden confrontation between the head of the camp Fuzov and the deputy politician Zeydenvar, on which the difficult relationship of both men with the translator Elena Zeydenvar is superimposed. For her, a Jewish woman who miraculously survived a concentration camp, it is unbearable to be behind barbed wire again. But she, like a faithful wife, follows her husband, trying to distance herself from others. And in this estrangement, the Germans no longer seem to her to be the enemies who had just destroyed her own people. Rather, they are her brethren in misfortune, to whom the woman treats with obvious sympathy. Her husband, obsessed with the idea of reconciliation, tries to become “his” among the prisoners, which causes frank rejection among the “irreconcilable” Germans and condescending grin from Fuzov, who does not go into open conflict with his deputy only because of Elena.
Finally, Fuzov himself, exiled to Siberia for defaming officer’s honor behavior, is frankly burdened with his position and duties, drinks a lot and yearns for the times when everything was clearly demarcated: there are own, there are strangers, there is a front line that must be kept and there is an enemy that must be thrown away. And now there is no war, no enemies, and the prisoners under his control are about to go home. The only visible authority over them is the right to draw up repatriation lists, transforming this once courageous and now broken man into a kind of native prince.
For Fuzov, the escape of the “rebels” a few days before the departure of the party in which they were supposed to leave for Germany is manna from heaven. This escape is absurd, meaningless, and can in no way help in gaining freedom. Freedom is always a relative concept. Here Peter Joost is free, not giving away fugitives despite being imprisoned in solitary confinement. An elderly corvetten captain nicknamed "Admiral" is free, despite his death days before his release. Japanese officer Akimoto is free despite sepukka after a failed escape. Elena and Alexander Zeydenvar are free, trying to mend human relations with former enemies. But the rebel leaders Lauterbach and Ebermayer never freed themselves from false illusions, still considering the Russians as enemies. Fuzov never let go of the war, rewarding him with post-front syndrome, which plunged him into the abyss of depression.
And these problems, the deep psychologism of the seemingly simple camp drama, made the German film of the Czech director not very clear to West German audiences. Instead of a story about the horrors of the Gulag, the venerable public was offered an existential drama, in which, for some reason, there were no “bad Russians” and “good Germans.” Exactly the opposite. And a philosophical story of relative and absolute freedom, no matter what scenery it is contained in, is not always able to reach the hearts, especially if its authors do not intend to appease it with sentimental melodrama. And if we add that neither bears with balalaikas, nor drunken soldiers in Ushanka nabreni, nor sadists-enkavedeshnikovs in the frame is not observed, then the film was prepared a straight road to oblivion.