Miklos Jancso, The Red and the White (Hungary, 1968)
The Red and White by Miklos Jancso was an antiwar movie. Jancso did a great work in sending the real evil face of any war, especially if it is a civil war. This movie had a history reference to it. It was about the Civil War that was in 1919 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Jancso wanted to sent a message of every dead man was a lost to the country and to everyone even to his enemies in this evil war. We saw very clearly the severe killing of both sides. Yong men were killed over and over from both sides. There was no winner in a civil war. All were loosing even the winner. The characters were not close to us, because there was not anyone that was more important than the others. In this movie there were no main characters that stayed with us to the end of the movie. We did not know much about their personal life, or who they were and what was there hope and fears. All we knew was about them if they were only the Red or the white. Even the characters who we know did not continue with us till the end of the movie, most of the time they were killed. Almost all of them were young men who got killed in a bad way with no mercy from both sides.
Jancso did not make it clear for the audience to distinguish between the Red and White. There was a kind of difficulty in following that. Furthermore, it was not only hard for the audience to know the difference; it was hard for the two groups to know who was the Red or the white. It was hard because they were the same people of the same culture and the same language, yet they treated each other in a cruel way of killing with no mercy or thought of what they were doing and whom are they killing.
All the characters were either on one side or the other, except the nurse. She was more humane than those soldiers who only follow of what they receive as orders. She was a righteous person that she was blind of seeing the color Red or White, all she saw was patience who needed care and help. All she saw was human being that deserves to live instead of getting killed in a civil war, but their cruel manners reached her too; she was forced to separate the two groups. Further more, she was killed as treason. She got killed because she did not want to be on any side.
Jancso also picked a plain landscape to refer to the emptiness of their war. It was so quite to the point of ignoring everything around. It was like a dead planet. The scenes did not take place in cities or places filled with people, which was better but it was like a worthless war.
