Geographically, Estonia is the northernmost of the three Baltic countries, next to Russia and across the sea from Finland. Just like many Eastern European countries, it has resisted the border between the West and the East, and has been pushed back and forth by the forces from the West and the East since ancient times. I remember that Estonia has three National Days to celebrate the victory of the war of independence against different enemies at different times. The ill-fated fate is evident. Sometimes people living in such a country don't have much choice when war and the great waves of history come. They can only choose to escape from the land they love, or stay and join this black and white battle.
During work, my driver is native to Estonia, but he speaks several languages besides the local language: German, Russian and English. He said that his father was German, his mother was local, and that he learned Russian because he wanted to do business with Russia. According to him, in this part of Estonia, many people have such a multilingual background. It was occupied by Germany several times and the Soviet Union, so the locals had to learn various languages to survive.
There is even an abandoned Soviet training base outside the small border town where I live. There is a monument next to it that records: Here, the Soviet Red Army once slaughtered hundreds of Estonian soldiers, so that future generations will not forget the history. Now that the war is over, the small town often has Russians coming to vacation across the border. The history is sometimes so light and sometimes so heavy.
The 1944 film takes place at the end of World War II, when the Soviet Union counterattacked and drove the German army all the way back to Germany from the border Eastern Europe. Estonia, a country that was repeatedly crushed by Soviet and German troops in World War II, will finally fall into the hands of the Red Army. In this war between the Red Army and the fascists, the irony is that the soldiers on the battlefield are actually "non-staff". Estonians wearing Nazi uniforms and holding MP40s; Estonians wearing Red Army leggings and driving T43s... These fellow villagers killed each other for a great ideal? For Hitler's or Stalin's highest honor? Is it the sense of purity in the highest-end ideology? Or just to survive, to eat and drink? In the slaughter of war, the highest echelons of power gain, while the soldiers who serve as cannon fodder lose their lives and humanity.
Just like Sholokhov's quiet Don River, just like Chen Zhongshi's White Deer Plain, all living beings in this land may just want to enjoy their family's happiness, but when the torrent of history and war hits, they don't have many choices.
In the middle of the film, a suicide note is used to change the perspective from the Nazis to the Red Army, and another suicide note is used at the end to jump the perspective from the Nazis and the Red Army to the real Estonians. A good war movie is like this. It does not need to describe the scenes of war like epics, and it does not need to promote fearless heroes like Hollywood. It really depicts such a small bright spot in history, like a literary work, use its own It is enough for the world to remember that there are so many similar people and similar things.
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