T-34 (film)
T-34 | |
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Directed by | Aleksey Sidorov |
Written by | Aleksey Sidorov |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Mikhail Milashin |
Edited by |
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Music by |
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Production companies |
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Distributed by | Central Partnership |
Release date |
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Running time | 139 minutes |
Country | Russia |
Language | Russian |
Budget | ₽600 million (US$10,000,000) |
Box office | ₽2 billion[1] (US$37,410,850)[2] |
T-34 (
T-34 was released in Russia by Central Partnership on January 1, 2019, and for hire converted into IMAX format. The film was released to generally positive reviews,[8] with critics praising the production quality and visual effects.[9][10] It was successful commercially, grossing 2.2 billion rubles (about $32 million) against a production budget of 600 million rubles, after a week in cinemas. It is in second place on Russia's biggest blockbusters list with over 8.5 million viewers and 2 billion rubles, and is currently the fourth-highest grossing Russian film of all time.
Plot
In November
Nikolay is assigned to command a damaged T-34 tank whose commander was killed with orders to delay Germans' advance and
Three years later, in
Nikolay picks out three other tankers from the POWs – driver Vasilyonok, loader Serafim Ionov, and gunner Demyan Volchok—to crew a
The Germans first order the Soviet prisoners to clear out the rotting and burned bodies from inside the tank, but as they remove the bodies, they unexpectedly find a small number of remaining live shells and
Before the training exercise, Nikolay and his crew retrieve the munitions and create a smoke screen to mask their movements. Believing the T-34 is unarmed, the Germans are unprepared when the trainees' first Panther tank is knocked out, and a second shell is fired directly into the observation tower, killing most of the officers inside, except for Jäger and Guderian, who jump out at the last second. The T-34 boldly storms through the training grounds’ car park (crushing many of the officers’ staff cars) and breaks through the main gate, avoiding the minefield. The tankers pick up Anya at a bus stop outside the camp; with her map, Nikolay plots a course toward Czechoslovakia and back to the Red Army's lines. In the first town they come to, Nikolay and his hungry crew find badly needed fuel, new clothing, and fresh food. They burn their ragged prisoner clothes as they drive out of town.
They encounter an anti-tank blockade, boasting a towed anti-tank gun, and barely manage to escape with only a deep gouge in the side armor of the right side of the turret, thanks to Nikolay’s frantically shouted order of “left!!” They weave back through the woods, avoiding the gun and its crew, and cross the road again out of sight and disappear into the deep forest for a while, until they are in the clear.
After driving on for a few hours, Stepan suggests that the beast is good, but will overheat soon, so they pull of into the woods to rest for the night.
At first, Nikolay suggests abandoning the tank and splitting up, believing they have a better chance of survival if they separate, but the crew insist on staying with him, also reluctant to leave their beloved beast. Before dawn, knowing that the Germans will be hunting them, Nikolay puts Anya out of their tank and tells her to make her way east on foot through the forests. Jäger meanwhile takes to the sky in a
At night, the T-34 enters the town and stumbles into the first of the four Panthers. Instead of trying to pierce its front armor, Volchok fires a shot under its hull that ricochets off the pavement and penetrates its underbelly. Nikolay realizes they are surrounded by the remaining three Panthers, including Jäger's. Knowing they need to distract the other crews, he sends out Volchok, armed only with a grenade, to disable one. Vasilyonok crashes their T-34 through building walls before unexpectedly having a near collision with one of the other Panthers. The Russians manually turn their damaged turret and get a shot off just as the Germans are about to fire, destroying the panzer, due to an ammo rack explosion, rattling the T-34 tank and the crew, stunning them. Meanwhile, the two other Panthers have arrived on the scene and one takes aim at Nikolay. However, Volchok manages to fire a shell out of the German tank he just captured. The third Panther is disabled, but Jäger quickly disposes of the captured Panther, badly wounding Volchok.
Both Jäger and Nikolay emerge from the cupolas of their tanks. Jäger throws down his glove, inviting Nikolay to a duel. Nikolay asks for five minutes to pick up the wounded Volchok. Both tanks then move outside the town and face off over a narrow stone bridge across the river. As the tanks charge at each other, Jäger fires several shots at the T-34, but fails to disable it, while Nikolay waits to fire their last shell directly through the driver's vision port. As in early production, Panthers still had driver’s view port hatch. The two tanks fire simultaneously, badly damaging but not disabling each other, however, Jäger’s crew is killed, leaving him alive, but badly wounded. Out of ammunition, Nikolay orders Vasilyonok to ram Jäger's tank, pushing it to the edge of the bridge. Jäger crawls out of his Panther while Nikolay aims a stolen rifle at him. Jäger shouts for Nikolay to shoot him, but Nikolay offers his foe mercy. Jäger extends his hand and the two adversaries exchange a handshake of respect. Nikolay tries to pull Jäger safe, but Jäger lets go, allowing himself to fall to his death as his Panther tips over the bridge and plummets into the river.
With their tank's tracks disabled, the crew reunites with Anya outside the town, carrying the wounded Volchok on a makeshift stretcher, and they make their way towards the Russian lines on foot.
The film ends with a dedication to the Red Army tank crews of the
Cast
- Junior LieutenantNikolay Ivushkin, tank officer
- Vinzenz Kiefer as SS-Standartenführer Klaus Jäger
- Viktor Dobronravov as Sergeant Stepan Vasilyonok, tank driver
- Irina Starshenbaum as Anya Yartseva, a translator in a concentration camp
- T-34-85(1944)
- Anton Bogdanov as Demyan Volchkov "Volchok", tank gunner (1944)
- Artur Sopelnik as T-34-76(1941)
- Pyotr Skvortsov as Andrey Lykov, machine gunner (1941)
- Semyon Treskunov as Red Army man Vasiliy Teterin "Teterya", lorry driver
- Guram Bablishvili as Starshina Guram Gabuliya, commander of the infantry squad
- Danila Rassomakhin as Vasechkin
- Artyom Bystrov as Captain Mikhail Korin
- Wolfgang Cerny as Wolf Hein, tank sniper
- Dirc Simpson as Grimm, the camp commandant
- Joshua Grothe as Thielicke
Rest of cast listed alphabetically
- Mike Davies as Generalinspekteur der Panzertruppe Heinz Guderian
- Igor Khripunov as Lapikov
- Robinson Reichel as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler
- Yaroslav Shtefanov as Makeev, machine-gunner
- Anton Shurtsov as Chief of staff
- Christoph Urban as Schlozer
- Alexandr Zaporozhets as Petya
- Elena Drobysheva as Nikolay Ivushkin's mother
Production
Development
On September 10, 2015, it was announced that the Mars Media film company would start production of the high-budget war action drama T-34.[11][12] Later, producer
Filming
The shooting process of T-34 started on 23 February and continued for 61 days. Some scenes were shot in
Pre-production
In the film, several real
Production designer Konstantin Pagutin spent a whole month building an entire village in a field near the village of Starlkowka, Kluj County, although the houses were destroyed at the beginning of the film, each one was designed in its own particular style, including hand-picked decorations and props.
Release
The film was scheduled to be released on December 27, 2018, in cinemas, but instead the picture was released on January 1, 2019, five days later than the planned date, distributors such as the Central Partnership and for rental converted to IMAX format.
Marketing
T-34 premiered at Comic-Con Russia 2018, the most attended Russian festival of pop culture, which took place in Moscow from 4 to 7 in October and once again beat attendance records, was held by the Central Partnership company.[15]
Reception
Box office
On the first day of release, the Russian box office amounted to 111,335,337 rubles.
Call for censorship
The Ukrainian Embassy in USA called on local U.S. cinemas to ban the film because they saw it as justifying and promoting Moscow’s hostile foreign and security policy.[16]
Critical response
The film received mixed ratings. The rating according to the critic aggregator “Kritikanstvo” is 5.5 / 10 (based on 26 reviews).
Some publications after the release of the trailer[17] and the premiere of the film wrote about the similarity of the story with the plot of the 1965 Soviet war film The Lark, noting that T-34 cannot be considered a remake of The Lark: both the method of presentation and the general outline of the narrative, and the ending of these two films are very different.[citation needed]
According to film critic
Novaya Gazeta critic Larisa Malyukova reflects on the role of tanks in modern Russian cinema; Sidorov took into account the shortcomings of the "tank" films of 2018 Tankers (film) and Tanks (ru) - "In his picture, the propaganda itch was partly tamed by uncomplicated adventures and vigorous battles, seasoned with humor, and reddened by love bliss". Like Dolin, Malyukova compares the picture with Soviet films on a military theme: "In those films, the Faulkner idea was beating with a living pulse: one cannot come from a war as a winner. They were aware of the global catastrophe, which was for our people the Second World War. In the latest domestic movie war, one cannot find the author's point of view. Instead of resorting to myth, there is mythologization of history. Instead of the anti-war spirit - the motto is “We can repeat it!”, a call to achievement. Instead of a brutal clever enemy we see complete idiots. The romanticization of war, the feeling of the ease of victory covers the screen".[18]
The critic Valery Kichin writes in Rossiyskaya Gazeta that one cannot form an idea of what the Great Patriotic War is in reality: "According to the plot, this is a legend like Bumbarash or The Elusive Avengers, restyled as a script for a computer game called T-34. That is, the spectacles are primarily effective and exciting. The dashing adventurous plot, the conditional situation of the action, the peculiar beauty even in the process of destruction. Yes, this is a movie about the feat of arms of the very folk hero who, as you know, rides, rides, doesn't whistle, but doesn’t let go. And the authors, undoubtedly, were inspired by the style of the adventure game: they use game techniques that are well-known to the modern viewer, and the wonderful feeling that the characters have several lives accompanies the entire film. And the actors here are not so much acting as playing: at the moments of the most implausible plot somersaults, a sly spark of cheerful excitement slips in their eyes. This sincerity removes all claims: people who went through a real front filmed military classics, now people with combat experience in video-games have come, they have different skills and ideas about the war".[19]
Evgeny Bazhenov, a YouTube video blogger and reviewer of Russian films, (known by his pseudonym BadComedian) criticized the film in its video review. According to him, the film is historically unreliable and justifies Nazism, concentration camps in the film are shown harmless, and SS Klaus is shown as almost a positive character, which rather offends the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War than perpetuates it.[20]
Accolades
Award | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
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Golden Eagle Award | January 24, 2020 | |||
Best Motion Picture | Aleksey Sidorov, Anton Zlatopolskiy, Ruben Dishdishyan, Len Blavatnik, Leonid Vereshchagin and Nikita Mikhalkov | Nominated | ||
Best Director | Aleksey Sidorov | Won | ||
Best Adapted Screenplay | Aleksey Sidorov | Won | ||
Best Leading Actor | Alexander Petrov | Nominated | ||
Best Leading Actress | Irina Starshenbaum | Nominated | ||
Best Supporting Actor | Viktor Dobronravov | Nominated | ||
Best Cinematography | Mikhail Milashin | Nominated | ||
Best Sets and Decorations | Konstantin Pakhotin | Nominated | ||
Best Costume Design | Ulyana Polyanskaya | Nominated | ||
Best Film Editing | Dmitry Korabelnikov | Nominated | ||
Best Sound Engineer | Aleksey Samodelko | Nominated | ||
Best Visual Effects | Algus Studio | Won |
See also
References
- Russian Cinema Fund
- ^ "T-34 (2018)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
- ^ "Т-34, 2019" [T-34 (2019)] (in Russian). Kinoafisha.Info.
- ^ "T-34". VokrugTV.
- ^ "Фильм "Т-34" занял второе место по сборам в истории российского проката" [The film T-34 took second place in the fees in the history of Russian hire] (in Russian). RIA Novosti. January 29, 2019.
- ^ ""Т-34" ворвался в исторический прокатный топ" ["Т-34" burst into historic rolling top] (in Russian). Gazeta.Ru. January 29, 2019.
- Life (news agency, Russia).
- KinoPoisk.
- ^ "T-34". Kritikanstvo.
- ^ "T-34". MegaCritic.
- ^ "Рубен Дишдишян спродюсирует высокобюджетную военную экшн-драму "Т-34"" [Ruben Dishdishyan will produce the T-34 high-budget war action drama] (in Russian). ProfiCinema. September 11, 2015.
- ^ "Режиссер фильма "Бой с тенью" снимет военную драму "Т-34"" [The director of the film Shadowboxing will remove the military drama T-34]. THR Russia (in Russian). September 10, 2015.
- Leonard Blavatnik and Hollywood producer and director Brett Ratner performed at the Russian pavilion in Cannes] (in Russian). Moskovskij Komsomolets. May 25, 2017.
- ^ Robert, Mitchell (May 19, 2017). "Cannes: Roskino Unveils New Russian Epic Furious (2017 film), War Film T-34". Variety.
- ^ ""Т-34" приедет на Comic Con Russia 2018" [T-34 will arrive at Comic-Con Russia 2018]. THR Russia (in Russian). September 26, 2018.
- ^ @ukrintheusa (February 18, 2019). "Please join our efforts and appeal to local U.S. cinemas…" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 2019-02-20. Retrieved 2023-05-25 – via Twitter.
- ^ Aldokhin, Denis (May 31, 2016). "Танк Т-34 нарушил законы физики в трейлере российского патриотического фильма" [The T-34 tank violated the laws of physics in the trailer for the Russian patriotic film]. Tut.By (in Russian).
- ^ Malyukova, Larisa (January 11, 2019). "Главный герой Нового года — танк" [The main character of the New Year is a tank]. Novaya Gazeta (in Russian).
- ^ Kichin, Valery (December 25, 2018). "Неуловимые мстители" [Elusive Avengers]. Rossiyskaya Gazeta (in Russian).
- ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKQlqjBDF8Q
External links
- T-34 at IMDb
- T-34 at Rotten Tomatoes
- T-34 at AllMovie