by Douglas Messerli
Ivan Shakhnazarov (screenwriter and director) Bez Slov
(Without Words) / 2010 [15 minutes]
Russian director Ivan Shakhnazarov’s
2010 short film is also about a relationship between two young men (Artyom
Alekseev and Pyotr Rykov), in this case both soldiers during an unnamed war,
probably World War II.
One of the ground soldiers has been severely injured, with an open leg
wound in which the internal muscle is exposed; a great deal of the first part
of this 15 minute work is devoted to his simply crawling through the woods to a
place of safety, or at least a place he might sit up and bandage his leg.
He finally finds a tree that seems suitable, but hears motion nearby and
turns, startled and afraid, his eyes open widely as he sees a man moving toward
him with a flash light. He begins to grab onto the soil again, pushing himself
through the leaves in slow escape.
Although the soldier approaching holds a machine gun and is clearly
unhurt, he seems almost as frightened as the man almost near death on the
ground. He turns in all directions, fearful of the slightest sounds, obviously not
a terribly experienced soldier.
Finally, he spots the wounded man and points his gun at him, the wounded
man preparing to die. For a few moments to two remain in arrest, performing
almost a frieze in the dark forest.
The wounded soldier prepares to die, but
seeing how seriously hurt the other is the soldier with the gun pauses, drops
his gun lower, and pulls out a small heel of bread, offering it to the hurt
man, and finally tossing it to him.
The grounded soldier finally grabs it
and begins greedily to eat, a slight smile expressed on the standing soldier’s
mouth. Carefully, the wounded soldier pulls out a flask of liquid, offering it
up first to the standing soldier.
Amazed by the gesture, the soldier
slowly bends to the ground, pulls off his helmet and takes up the flask. He
drinks and the other continues gnawing on his bread.
The wounded man, again very cautiously, reaches into another pocket and
pulls out pieces of cut paper and from his outer coat pocket pulls a small bag
of tobacco, rolling a cigarette, his enemy handing him matches. He lights up
and smokes, passing the cig on to his momentary “friend.”
But suddenly there are the sounds of
other voices, and four flashlights attached to uniforms can be seen in the near
distance, obviously from the same search and destroy team to which the healthy
soldier belongs. There is a shot and laughter in the distance.
The other soldier, now standing, takes out a pistol from a pocket, aims,
and fires. He pauses for a few long seconds, huffing in a manner that one might
almost describe as crying. He puts out the cigarette with his boot heel, places
his helmet back on his head, and trudges off, as hear the boots of his
colleagues move quicker toward the now-dead man.
Certainly, in this strangely gentle moment in the midst of horror, the
two have shared a few seconds of something like love, of camaraderie that is
rare between opposing forces. But it is that simply of two men, two soldiers,
two beings who recognize in one another their shared humanity. And as beautiful
and strange as that is, it has absolutely nothing to do with sex or queer love,
even if such an expression of kindness is indeed queer in the sense of unusual
and odd.
This short film is very moving, and
suggests a stirring in the two that might—if the flames of such shared love of
mankind were only to be fanned by universal empathy—truly change things. But
that change is not, as far as I can see, a LGBTQ one, as sympathetic as most
LGBTQ people might be to the greater cause of love between human beings.
Again, one can only wonder why this excellent contemporary silent film, Without
Words, has been gathered as a “gay themed movie,” (GTM) and why with only
the title and the words “gay film” it shows up on internet searches as a movie
posted by “Gay Motion Pictures.”
Los Angeles, April 18, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (April 2022).
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