This film apparently took some guts to make. A film set during the Russian Civil War, made at the height of Soviet power, that basically depicts both sides of the conflict as ruthless, bloodthirsty, brutal, and senseless, had to have pissed off a lot of powerful people in Jancso's backyard. As a remonstration (that is apparently not a word) of war, this film succeeds admirably. Anyone who watches this and sees glory in the mindless bloodshed is already inclined toward war; the rest of us feel soul-emptying horror as we watch men callously herd captives about, execute them at random, and then march off to fight a line of men that just guns them down.

The film itself captures all…

One of the few truly anti-war pictures. Jancso's masterful direction keeps you enthralled.

The Red and the White paints war as utter chaos.It is a nihilistic, bleak and violent picture.

The movie is very political driven to show that war is meaningless and can sometimes be confusing to see which side is really the “good” guy and which is not. The movie demonstrates this characteristic by being confusing for the viewer to follow. There is no central character and the death of many people occur just for the country they are from.

This turbulence is beautifully offset by Jancso’s fluently flowing long takes -- which is one of his attributes -- making the gaze of the camera something like an…

Set during the Russian Civil War and concentrated on an area defined by hills and dense woodland overlooking the Volga river, The Red and the White explores the mechanisms of power conceptually as its characters serve political statuses with no individual agency.

Written and directed by Miklós Jancsó, It's an impressive minimalist anti-war film. It accounts Hungarian Communists generally supporting the 'Red' revolutionaries in conflict with the 'White' counter-revolutionaries for control of the region. There's some magnificent cinematography from Tamás Somló which is impressive equally on both a visual and technical breadth, and the camera chiefly classifies the characters crusades for superiority as an endless rotation of increase and loss.

It delivers a vast amount of elegiac and stylistic virtuosity…

80/100

Second viewing, last seen 2006. Emblematic moment occurs just a dozen or so minutes in, when the officer with the Fu Manchu mustache who appears to be a potential protagonist suddenly stops dead while facing the camera, throws his rifle aside, starts to disrobe, then leaps to his apparent death—all without our having yet seen or even heard what prompted this behavior. Every subsequent power shift feels just as casual and arbitrary, but it still takes a while to grasp that we're to be given no identification figure of any kind, that we're more or less watching a Slackerized portrait of the Russian Civil War (with an emphasis on the particularly dazed experience of Hungarian irregulars). Some "characters" are…

War is an invitation to disorder, to catastrophe, to confusion. Csillagosok, katonák is a flawless statement on the futility of war and how it becomes a destructive force that can overcome the ideals of any military or idealistic side. Through dreamlike sequences, Miklós Jancsó introduces us to a world plagued by ironic events with a tone of criticism throughout, where military ranks are meaningless and the final outcomes are absolutely chaotic and uncontrollable. It makes a non-linear and sometimes unrelated transition between characters as if they were independent pieces of an anarchich system, and the result is one of the best anti-war testaments ever made.

I have heard complaints in the past regarding how the indifferent scope of the atrocities…

I have a sneaking suspicion that Miklos Jancso and Tamas Somlo just might be my favorite cinematic tag team. And, I've only watched two of their collaborations, The Round-Up and The Red and the White.

Jancso and Somlo team up, once again, for a veritable visual feast of black and white long takes wherein most (if not all) of the action resides in the periphery. The camera, slow-moving yet concentrated with its focus, even though that focus tends to be relayed off endlessly throughout; gliding back and forth, pulling in and out of the (in)action of the Russian Civil War the camera seems to play the role of the war flag. Its focus tethered to a soldier, whether it be…