Review of Alexander Nevsky

Eisenstein's film about a Russian defense of their motherland from the evil German forces can easily be interpreted, well, too easily actually, as a call to arms to Russia's people against, YES! The Germans! The film is somewhat laborous to sit through until the actual war scenes take place, but until that happens, there's a little bit of a lecture (and some songs) from Alexander and friends about why this has to happen and What Makes Russia So Great! But the main focus of this is the epic battle sequence that features heaven knows how many extras waving their axes and swords around occasionally hitting something, (usually someone's head) It seems the extras get carried away in several scenes, you can see several of them attacking each other lol. Though masterful, the whole thing DOES become a bit repetitive after awhile, eg people swinging weapons around, people riding horses, people getting bopped on heads etc.

Finally, I have no idea whether exportfilm (which I guess handled subtitling for this film?) has corrected the English subtitles, but the version I saw had more or less the correct dialog for the film,.but was presented in a very yoda-like manner. eg "Fight, we must!"