The Ascent – ​​Voskhozhdenie (1977)

Directed by: Larisa Shepitko | 111 minutes | drama, war | Actors: Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Serget Takovlev, Lyudmila Polyakova, Viktoriya Goldentul, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Mariya Vinogradova, Nikolai Sektimenko

As part of the release of ‘Women Make Film: a New Road Movie Through Cinema’ (Mark Cousins, 2021), Eye Filmmuseum has a special film program dedicated to female directors and Larisa Shepitko’s ‘The Ascent’ is part of this program. It is more than justified that this film gets extra attention with a national release. This beautiful and crushing black-and-white film from 1977 has an unbridled energy that contemporary productions can still suck at. ‘The Ascent’ sharply depicts how morally complex the situation was for ordinary Belarusian citizens during the Second World War.

‘The Ascent’ zooms in on two pro-Soviet partisans, Sotnikov and Rybak. After a failed military operation, the two Partisans are constantly on the heels of the German occupier. The entire film is therefore steeped in fear of the enemy. Any kind of rustling in the forest can be life-threatening. Also, Rybak and Sotnikov are never quite sure whether they can trust the locals. One moment someone pleases you, the next you are sold for grace by the occupier. Shepitko shows with ‘The Ascent’ how difficult it is to follow a moral compass at all when the priority is survival.

From location to style, ‘The Ascent’ is undeniably wintry and the monstrous kind. Not a winter that you can comfortably endure by a fireplace, but one that can break the bones. You can feel the freezing cold creeping down your legs while watching the movie. Every sigh and footstep of Rybak and Sotnikov through the Belarusian snow landscape resonates in the hall. The soundtrack helps with this and goes through the marrow and bone. All this makes the film an intensely physical experience. If the ‘The Ascent’ isn’t primarily a moral tale, which is clearer in its second half, the film could just as well be a precursor to the modern political thriller.

The first half of ‘The Ascent’ is reminiscent in terms of physical attrition of the snow-covered Polish production ‘Essential Killing’ by Jerzy Skolimowski from 2010. In this post 9/11 political survival thriller, an Arab political prisoner played by Vincent Gallo saves fleeing from his American pursuers. But where Vincent Gallo doesn’t talk for most of the film, ‘The Ascent’ in its second part is a court drama, but of the show trial kind. Rybak and Sotnikov are already guilty in the eyes of the German occupier, only Shepitko is concerned with how the two men deal with it in a different way. Also note the chilling role of the collaborator Portnov, played by Anatoly Solonitsyn, in the show trial (Solonitsyn began his film career as the holy monk Andrei Rublyov in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1966 film of the same name). Above all, Shepitko shows compassion for her characters in an almost spiritual way, even if they make ‘wrong choices’.

At the original release, Shepitko took great pains to steer her film through Belarusian censorship, as the judging committee believed Shepitko had made a religious story rather than one about the partisan battle against the Nazis. Director Elem Klimov, Shepitko’s partner, put in a good word with Pyotr Masherov, among others. Masherov was a high-ranking party official who had fought as a partisan during World War II. According to tradition, Masherov was moved to tears, so that the film finally got through. In addition, Shepitko received a lot of praise for the film abroad, culminating in winning the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. For a long time, the highly talented Shepitko was not allowed to enjoy her success with ‘The Ascent’, because in 1979 she was killed in a car accident while searching for locations for her next film, ‘Farewell’ (later finished by Klimov, who also the gruesome 1985 anti-war classic ‘Come & See’).