Nobody Wanted To Die

Niekas nenorėjo mirti; war drama, Lithuania, 1965; D: Vytautas Žalakevičius, S: Regimantas Adomaitis, Juozas Budraitis, Algimantas Masiulis, Donatas Banionis, Vija Artmane

Lithuania in the 1 9 5 0s. The Forest Brothers, a Lithuanian guerilla, is waging a rebellion against the Soviet-Communist occupation. Lokis, the chairman of the Soviet council of a village, is shot and killed through a window in his office by the Forest Brothers. His sons, including Donatas, swear revenge. A former Forest Brother partisan who was given amnesty, Vaitkus, whose father is a mute shoemaker, is forced to take the position of the new chairman. At first, Vaitkus is reluctant, but then takes his job so seriously that he even leads an ambush of the rebels, where many are killed. In the revenge attack, the Forest Brothers shoot Vaitkus and attack the village, but Donatas and his brothers shoot them.

"Nobody Wanted to Die" is a surprisingly daring movie for Lithuanian cinema during the censorship of the Soviet occupation, depicting the rarely talked about "taboo" topic of Forest Brothers, the anti-Communist insurgents who fought against the Soviets for a decade after the end of World War II. As expected, some restrictions and "controlled" choices inhibit the storyline, reducing its value, but it is still an interesting watch. The director Vytautas Zalakevicius uses aesthetic black-and-white cinematography and fine camera drives to frame this story, which can also be interpreted as a meditation on compliance and obedience—one of the protagonists, villager Vaitkus, previously served among the ranks of the Forest Brothers, and is now forced to take the position of the chairman of the Soviet council of the village. At first he is reluctant, but slowly, gradually, he accepts what is expected from him by the authorities, and betrays the Forest Brothers fully. Why do some people obey immoral orders? If they were to be shoved from one camp to another, the opposite one, would they immediately change their worldview? This is illustrated in the sequence in the mill, where several Forest Brother insurgents are ambushed and shot while trying to transport flour, while Vaitkus walks up to the body of one of them lying on the floor, seemingly dead, covered in flour, but then the man winks at Vaitkus from beneath—who instead of cooperation, snitches him in front of the villager, and orders him to stand up. Several details are neat (the authorities try to recruit a farmer on the field for the position of the chairman, but he refuses: "They killed five chairmen in a year. Anyone would rather stare up a horse's ass than angel's faces!"), but the dialogue is not always inspired, whereas the story does feel a bit slow and conventional, which reduces the enjoyment value. Nonetheless, it is valuable in depicting the theme of how a foreign ideology is dividing and forcing people of the same nation to fight and kill each other.

Grade:++