"LET'S go to the cinema to see the new film about Chechnya," my friend, Nina, said. As relaxation, it was the last thing I needed.
Last week the TV showed streams of refugees leaving Grozny after hardline Russian generals issued an ultimatum that they would storm the city. It also covered in full the arrival of Alexander Lebed to overrule the generals and reach a new peace agreement with the Chechen rebels.
Despite my Chechnya fatigue, however, I allowed Nina to drag me to the cinema to see Kavkazsky Plennik (Caucasian Prisoner). How glad I am that I did. Now I understand why Russian critics called it the best film of 1996.
It tells the story of two Russian soldiers captured by the Chechens and kept prisoner in one of their villages high in the Caucasian mountains. Because the soldiers, Ivan and his senior officer Sasha, are taken at the beginning of the film when their tank is ambushed in a ravine, there is almost no fighting and plenty of time for the prisoners to learn about life in a Chechen village.
Ivan and Sasha are held by a Chechen elder called Abdul, whose own son is a prisoner of the Russians in jail in Grozny. He also has a beautiful daughter, Dina (12), and an old servant, Hassan, who is dumb because his tongue was ripped out in a Soviet Labour camp.
The Russian stereotype of the Chechens is that they are vengeful and cruel. But Ivan, played by Sergei Bodrov Jnr, the son of the director Sergei Bodrov, and Sasha, played by Russia's new matinee idol Oleg Menshikov, are treated by their captors according to how they themselves behave. When they arrive in the village, "injured, Abdul lays them gently on a sheepskin in his own home and Dina gives them tea. Only when they try to escape by attacking Hassan are chains put round their legs which slow but not entirely restrict their movement.
Now they are kept in the stable along with the donkeys but they have a window through which they can observe the villagers - the dignified old men in their high sheepskin hats, the women baking bread, the children dancing. Ivan, little more than a child himself, falls in love with Dina and carves a bird for her. He also mends Abdul's watch, which softens the old Chechen and makes hi forgiving when the Russians disgrace themselves by getting drunk on the villagers' stock of wine.
Unknown to the prisoners, Ivan's mother, a schoolteacher from provincial Russia, has arrived in Chechnya and Abdul is prepared to return her son directly to her on condition he does not go back to the army. But just at this moment, the soldiers spoil everything by making a dramatic escape bid in which they kill old Hassan and the shepherd on the mountainside.
They are quickly recaptured. Their punishment comes swiftly. Sasha as the senior officer, is beheaded and young Ivan is put down a well. Dina pities him, lowering bread and water to him and dancing for him, so from the depths of the well he can see her red skirt swirling against the sky.
Then comes the news that the Russians have killed Abdul's son in Grozny. Ivan must die to pay for this. Dina tells him she will dig his grave and maybe he will find a bride in heaven. Ivan begs him to throw him the key to the padlock on his chains so he can climb out of the well and escape. She does this but then he refuses to run away as this will only make trouble for her.
Abdul seizes him and marches him up the stony mountainside to be executed. A shot rings out to satisfy the villagers but Abdul has deliberately missed. Ivan is left free on the mountain. Russian helicopter gun ships sweep over to strafe the village, deaf to Ivan's cries of "don't, don't" which are carried away on the wind.
The war in Chechnya is a terrible stain on Russian democracy but at least citizens are free to criticise it. Similar films were made about the Soviet Union's 10 year war in Afghanistan but only after it ended in 1989. It is a measure of Russia's new democracy that such a powerful film can be shown while the war is still going on.