Nikita Mihalkov is arguably the most important Russian director of all time. He earned worldwide fame with his Academy Award-winning 1994 movie Burnt by the Sun. 16 years later, he decided to make a sequel to it in two installments. Naturally, expectations were more than high, since he had become synonymous with great directing in the meantime.
Burnt by the Sun 2: Exodus, the first installment, released in 2010, received some of the worst reviews in Mihalkov’s career, and most people were simply confused as to how such a great director had managed to make such a pointless movie. Still, the second installment, Burnt by the Sun 2: Citadel, answered all questions. It is fair to say that Mihalkov has managed to make yet another masterpiece.
"Nikita Mihalkov is arguably the most important Russian director of all time."
This movie is about searching for God and the goodness in man amidst the worst possible circumstances created by war. Also, if you watch all three movies as a whole, it is a story about falling from grace and getting back through hell and purgatory. In any case, the theme of the movie is universal and it possesses strong symbolism that simply catches your attention and makes you think deeply about the basic values of life.
The plot is quite dynamic, as it follows the story of General Kotov (Nikita Mihalkov himself), who is now a private in a penitentiary battalion facing an impenetrable German fortress on Russian soil. The main culprit for his downfall in previous movies, the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) colonel Mitya (Oleg Menshikov), searches for Kotov and takes him to Stalin. There, Kotov gets to clear his name completely, though he is also ordered to sacrifice 15,000 men in a suicide attack that will finally end the siege. Kotov, however, decides to take a different path.
"This movie is about searching for God and the goodness in man amidst the worst possible circumstances created by war."
From a linguistic point of view, the movie maintains the high standards which are the trademark of Mihalkov’s scripts, and the dialogue perfectly depicts the era depicted in the movie. The curious part, for anyone who speaks or wishes to speak Russian, is the scene with Stalin. He was a Georgian, and the heavy Georgian accent can be perfectly heard in this scene. It makes for a huge contrast with the clean and soft Russian spoken by the other characters, and it allows you to hear exactly how different the regular accent is from the accent of non-native speakers.
All in all, Citadel is a movie that definitely deserves attention. It was submitted to the Academy Award as Russia’s representative for the Foreign Film Oscar, but it didn’t make the shortlist. This fact should be carefully considered in light of the contemporary political situation, but if watched without any bias, Citadel really has a lot to offer.
