It is apparently a rather good year for Russian war films. While the stellar 9th Company stands as a timely answer to Platoon, Bastards turned heads with its story of criminal youth forcibly conscripted for suicide missions, and now Transit has arrived with its sprawling tale of life on a remote air base. While all three have very different approaches and succeed to varying degrees all three share simply stellar production values and a willingness to challenge history.
Opening in 1942 in remote Chukutka, a stark and desolate region of north eastern Siberia, Transit revolves around a remote airfield valuable only for its role in transporting aircraft and weaponry from Russia’s allies in America to the Russian front of the battle against Nazi Germany. This is a war film that contains not a single lick of combat choosing instead to focus on the little people in the background who made the war effort possible.
With the focus of the film squarely on the base itself a huge assortment of characters is free to come and go at will. There is the Commander, a violent and boorish drunk; the beautiful translator, the supporting officers who actually run the place; the cook and doctor, both conscripted into military service via trumped up charges of spying and sabotage; the cleaning girls; the mechanics and pilots; the Inuit natives; and the all-female squad of American pilots who deliver the new fighter planes from bases in Alaska to the Russian installation so that the Russians can, in turn, transport them to the front.
A loosely scripted affair Transit doesn’t follow any particular narrative thread, choosing instead to follow the complex relationships of the camp, slowly allowing us to get to know these people which is no mean feat with a cast as large as this. Though the English speaking actors are a bit uneven the core cast are all quite strong. The big reason to see this, however, are the production values, the film paying remarkable attention to detail and having been shot on location in some truly breathtaking country.
Writer-director Alexander Rogozhkin seems to have some trouble deciding what sort of film he wants to make here, with some elements reflecting the whimsy of recent Korean war film Welcome to Dongmakgol and others perhaps reflecting a bit of Altman’s M*A*S*H before the film wraps up with a bit of a murder mystery.
The just released Russian DVD is excellent, featuring a quality anamorphic transfer, 5.1 sound and very strong English subtitles. If you are looking to dip your toes into the pool of recent Russian war films I would personally recommend starting with 9th Company – by far the strongest of the three titles mentioned – but Transit is certainly not without charms of its own.