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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
Skip this one if you need big explosions or snappy talk because Generalen is pure, old-school melodrama. It is totally worth a watch if you have a soft spot for grainy, silent-era vibes, but modern thriller fans will probably fall asleep in minutes. 😴
The setup is super simple. Maria, a young Russian student, marries Viktor, a scientist, and then bam—the war starts literally seconds later.
Talk about terrible timing. The poor guy gets drafted as a lieutenant before the wedding cake is even cold.
There is this one oddly funny scene where Viktor stares at his new military uniform in the mirror. He looks so completely lost, like he accidentally walked onto the wrong movie set and is too polite to leave.
It reminded me a lot of the heavy-handed doom you find in Captain of His Soul. Everyone in these movies looks like they are carrying the weight of the entire planet on their shoulders.
Maria’s actress has these massive, expressive eyes that do most of the heavy lifting. She spends about half her screen time just staring longingly out of dusty windows.
You can almost feel the director waving his arms off-camera, shouting at her to look even sadder. And honestly? It works.
The copy I watched was pretty beat up, which actually made it better. Sometimes a giant black speck of dust would land right on a actor's nose for three seconds during a serious moment.
The war scenes feel very small-scale and cramped. It is mostly three guys in a muddy trench looking worriedly at the sky.
It definitely lacks the kinetic energy of something like Paying the Price. But those quiet, empty moments have their own kind of ghostly power.
The ending comes on way too fast, almost like the filmmakers realized they were running out of actual film. It just sort of stops.
Still, for a quiet Sunday afternoon when you want to travel back in time? You could do a lot worse than this. ☕