Song of Heroes: A history lesson that hits like a sledgehammer

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you are a film student obsessed with early documentary techniques or someone who gets a kick out of aggressive industrial progress montages, you might find something here. Otherwise, you’re probably going to be bored to tears. It’s definitely not for anyone looking for a plot that doesn't involve heavy machinery or patriotic singing.

The whole thing feels like it’s trying to convince you that iron ore is the most exciting substance on earth. Maybe it is if you’re a 1930s factory planner. For the rest of us, it’s a lot of smoke and steel beams.

The rhythm of the furnace

The way Joris Ivens edits this is honestly kind of hypnotic, even if you hate the message. There’s this one sequence where the stop-motion animation shows tractors just popping into existence, and it’s weirdly charming. It reminded me a bit of the technical obsession found in Na krasnom fronte, where the visuals are doing all the heavy lifting.

I couldn't help but notice how much time is spent on the actual construction of the furnace. It’s all rivets and sweat. There’s this English-speaking engineer wandering around looking very out of place while a young kid learns to rivet. It feels less like a movie and more like a training video that went on a massive budget bender.

Odd moments

The transition from a nomad family in a yurt to heavy industrial steelworks is… abrupt. Like, one minute we’re on the steppe, and the next we’re watching coal get turned into coke. It’s a bit jarring. It makes me think of the tonal shifts in Monkey Business, though obviously with zero slapstick and 100% more iron production.

The singing at the end? It’s loud. Very, very loud. It’s the kind of patriotic tune that feels like it’s being shouted directly into your forehead. You can tell the crew really, really wanted this to look like a utopia.

• The stop-motion tractors are genuinely cool.
• The sound design is mostly just clanging, which gets old fast.
• It’s surprisingly short, thank goodness.
• The way they frame the labor force is super earnest, almost to a fault.

At the end of the day, it’s a time capsule. It’s not a great "movie" in the way we think of movies today, but it’s a fascinating look at how people used to sell the idea of a future. It’s definitely not as fun as The Texas Tornado, but then again, what is?