The Ascent (1977) The Greatest Anti-War Film You Haven’t Seen (Review)

Released on Blu-ray this week via the Criterion label comes arguably the best war, or rather anti-war film, you’ve never seen. What’s that at the back? You’ve seen Melville’s Army of Shadows already? Well that’s OK, because I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Larisa Shepitko’s stunning 1977 Golden Bear winning The Ascent.

The Ascent is a black and white Soviet drama from Mosfilm based on a 1970 novel by the Balarusian author Vasil Bykaŭ which has been variously called The Ordeal and Liquidation, but is perhaps best known as Sotnikov, from the narrative’s central protagonist. Bykaŭ was a prolific novelist whose books were based on his experiences serving in the Red Army during World War Two (or rather, The Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia) and Sotnikov is no exception. It tells the story of two Soviet partisans, Sotnikov and Rybak, who are sent off in search of food during a retreat from the advancing German army. Coming across a farmhouse, they are captured by the Germans. Interrogated and tortured, the two men endure a long dark night of the soul in preparation for the morning and meeting their inevitable tragic fates. At the eleventh hour, Sotnikov’s spirit will prove unbreakable, whilst Rybak will betray him in the fruitless hope that his own life will be spared.

The novel first came to the attention of Larisa Shepitko at a very difficult time in her life. In 1971, she had made the film You and I, a character study concerning two surgeons struggling with different notions of fulfilment which was widely seen as a swipe at modern consumerism from the Soviet filmmaker. However, the process of making the film proved incredibly traumatic for Shepitko whose rising stress levels saw her require medical treatment. The release of You and I also proved problematic, with censors determined to delete key scenes which Shepitko believed robbed her film of its true meaning. Its prize-winning at the Venice Film Festival did little to cheer the pregnant Shepitko, who fell into a devastating period of mental and physical exhaustion that saw her admitted to a sanatorium for some months. Her recovery was further set back when she suffered a fall that resulted in a serious concussion and a spinal injury that confined her to bed for several more weeks. In constant pain and discomfort from both the fall and her pregnancy, Shepitko’s thoughts often turned to death. She began to read Bykaŭ’s novel and found that her philosophical musings on mortality could find an outlet with a big-screen adaptation. As she herself said; “All motion pictures are personal but the desire to film The Ascent was almost a physical need. If I had not shot this picture it would have been a catastrophe for me. I could not find any other material with which I could transmit my views on life, on the meaning of life”.

It would take Shepitko four years to make her adaptation of The Ascent a reality, and a further three years before it was actually released. Part of this delay was because of the painstakingly committed screenwriting process from Yuri Klepikov whose script was meticulously examined by Shepitko as director and script editor. As a filmmaker, Shepitko had no time for improvisation, everything must be carefully considered and planned in advance. The adaptation became, in Klepikov’s words “a piping philosophical parable which combined the high spirit of man with his obvious desire to keep the body as a receptacle of the spirit”. On paper, the suicide mission partisans Sotnikov and Rybak would become the reincarnations of Christ and his betrayer, Judas, whilst the title The Ascent (suggested by Shepitko’s husband and fellow filmmaker Elem Klimov) would allude to the biblical ascension; the very act in which Jesus Christ physically departed from Earth for Heaven following his crucifixion and resurrection. Given the nature of such religious connotations in an avowedly Communist country which had turned its back on the Church, it was perhaps inevitable that the film would fall foul of the USSR’s labyrinthine bureaucracy – with the State Committee of Cinematography and the State Political Directorate having the final say on whether a film could or could not be made. That say was, initially at least, firmly negative.

Undeterred, Shepitko turned to Gemma Firsova, a former contemporary at Moscow’s film school VGIK (Gerasmiov Institute of Cinematography) now working as an administrator of Soviet Military film propaganda. Liaising with the Minister of Cinematography, Firsova enthused about Klepikov’s screenplay, arguing that the adaptation was vastly superior to Bykaŭ’s novel and that she would take personal responsibility for Shepitko’s film with the Political Directorate. Production was, with some concern, hesitantly granted permission and Shepitko began the auditioning and casting process, looking for an actor who could resemble Christ – a desire she could not speak aloud of course. Despite the advances of major Soviet stars of the day, Shepitko favoured unknowns, casting a suitably Messianic theatre actor, the 25-year-old Boris Plotnikov, in the role of Sotnikov and, for Rybak, Vladimer Gostyukhin, a former veteran furniture and prop maker of the Soviet Army Theatre whose latent performing talent had been unearthed when he was called to replace a sick actor in a production of Unknown Soldier. Initially, Gostyukhin did not endear himself to the crew, being rather rude and incredulous that Shepitko, a woman, could make a film of Sotnikov, arguing that he could not equate “a woman of great beauty with the super-masculine, tough and tragic story by Vasil Bykaŭ.” However, Shepitko, whose methodology was to incorporate all the cast and crew into her vision, communicating clearly her thoughts and ambitions with discussions of concepts such as the motherland, higher values, conscience, duty and spiritual heroism, quickly won him around and altered viewpoints wholesale. As Yuri Raksha, the film’s production designer, recalled “We started to work and began our unique existence along with the characters. I can say that the film matured us too. Speaking about the holy things, about categories of high spirituality, we were obligated to apply high standards to ourselves too. It was impossible to be one person on the set and to be another one in real life”. As a leader, Shepitko was someone who did not ask others to do anything she would not do herself. This meant that, when shooting sequences of her cast running through the thick snow to escape the advancing Germans, she would run alongside the actors too, in order to experience their exhaustion. The fact that Shepitko did this with all her health problems – the spinal trauma and a recurring problem with hepatitis – is nothing short of astonishing and her resolute, unwavering commitment clearly encouraged the same commitment from all who worked on the film.

Unfortunately, Shepitko could not convince the authorities as easily. Angered that a partisan story that could have been useful propaganda had become instead a spiritual and mystical story of martyrdom, the authorities moved to ban the production. Frustrated at the possibility that a major work for his wife could potentially be shelved, Elem Klimov contacted Pyotr Masherov, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Belarus who, as a former partisan himself whose mother was hanged by the Nazis in 1942, was working as a consultant on Klimov’s own project Killing Hitler (subsequently released in 1985 as Come and See). Klimov convinced his friend to a special preview of his wife’s film. Like Gostyukhin before him, Masherov had reservations regarding Shepitko’s suitability for the story and expected to see an ‘effeminate’ style of film-making that would not do justice to the heroism of his experience. However, within thirty minutes, he was compelled by the events on the screen and openly weeping after a further half-hour. At the film’s conclusion, Masherov, the old partisan and Party top brass, took to the stage and showered praise upon the film, asking of Shepitko with some wonderment“Where did this girl come from, who of course experienced nothing of the sort, but knows all about it, how could she express it like this?” With such a seal of approval now granted, the film was passed without any alteration of further concern.

And it is a remarkable film. Perhaps precisely because Shepitko is a woman, The Ascent is a war film that does not concern itself with the usual tropes of the genre. A key example of this is the pitched battle between the advancing Germans and the partisans who are retreating into the snowcapped forests. Any other (male) filmmaker would make this a showy spectacle, but not Shepitko – who chooses to place this action-packed moment not only at the front of her film, but has it purposefully playing over the opening titles. What are we to make of this decision? Well, I’d argue that, for Shepitko, combat is simply the physical manifestation of admirable qualities such as duty, bravery, heroism and the more human, less admirable quality of self-preservation. Action is of little interest to Shepitko, who concentrates purely on the psychological and spiritual qualities that point towards the inherent, astonishing endurance that ensures Sotnikov’s spirit is victorious even when his physical self loses. If The Ascent has a message it is, therefore, a testament to an unbreakable spirit. It is the one thing that an antagonist cannot fight and the one thing that will sow the seeds of their ultimate defeat too, with the sobering knowledge that such a spirit cannot be found within their own souls.

A harrowing but ultimately a curiously inspiring, hopeful piece, the thought-provoking The Ascent brought Larisa Shepitko an international reputation. It became only the second film directed by a woman to win a Golden Bear at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival and, in recognition, she was asked to serve on the jury the following year. A promising, glittering and internationally regarded career seemed to be opening up for Shepitko, but it was not to be. The Ascent would be her final and her most famous film. On 2nd July 1979, Shepitko was scouting for locations in Tver for an adaptation of Valentin Rasputin’s 1976 novel, Farewell to Matyora when the car she was travelling in crashed on the highway outside the city, killing her and four other members of her crew. She was just forty-one-years-old. Her husband, Klimov completed the film, entitled Farewell, in 1983 but critics mourned the loss of his wife’s “unique personal vision… that could never be replicated”.

Thank you for reading Mark’s Review of THE ASCENT (1977)

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