1998 was the year of Steven Spielberg’s SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, a war movie that allegedly broke new ground in its depiction of the ugliness of combat. Few seem to know, then or now, about the Russian made-for-TV movie PURGATORY (CHISTILISCHCHE) from the same year, which far outdid Spielberg’s film in grit, gore and sheer unpleasantness. It’s been described as playing “like THE GREEN BERETS directed by Lucio Fulci,” a comparison with which I’ll have to agree.
The subject is the disastrous Chechen campaign of 1994-95, when Russian forces invaded Chechnya’s capital city of Grozny, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. Writer-director Aleksandr Nevzorov was a TV reporter who covered the conflict, and based the film on events he personally witnessed.
At its simplest PURGATORY is about a beleaguered Russian military unit making its way through war-torn Grozny in early 1995, a hellish landscape of blood, filth and fire. The unit attempts to haul away its wounded soldiers but finds itself trapped in a bombed-out hospital surrounded by Chechen bandits, led by a Chechen doctor who proves disturbingly bloodthirsty. A Russian tank is called in to assist the soldiers, but it accomplishes little outside of flattening the innumerable corpses and body parts scattered everywhere. After a lot of assorted bloodletting the Russians finally succeed in capturing the city, but their victory, it’s made clear, is neither heroic nor cathartic.
It’s no exaggeration to call this one of the filthiest films ever made, with its retinue of burned-out, debris-strewn locations racked by ceaseless gunfire and explosions. There’s no real story to speak of, with the film beginning quite literally in the middle of a bloody skirmish and continuing in that fashion for the remainder of its running time. It’s not unlike the opening ten minutes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN spread out over a full two hour canvas.
Oftentimes it’s difficult to tell the Russians and Chechens apart, which seems to have been the whole point, and nor do any of the soldiers and bandits fighting this war (civilians are seen only as corpses and parts of same) ever register as distinct individuals. That lack of character-based grounding hurts the film, whose concern is solely with the bigger picture, but taken as a sheer blood-and-guts spectacle it more than does its job.
PURGATORY has been dismissed as “nationalist propaganda” by some, and indeed, Nevzorov does seem to go out of his way to portray the Chechens as barbaric savages—as in a scene in which Chechen bandits decapitate a Russian prisoner and then toss his head around, and another in which Chechen women snipers gleefully shoot a Russian in the crotch, and another in which a Russian soldier is crucified. But then, in Nevzorov’s defense, the Russian soldiers aren’t portrayed in a much rosier light, as evinced by the revenge they take on the aforementioned crotch-shooters, which is profoundly degrading and unpleasant.
The high definition shot-on-video visuals are another problem, one that betrays the film’s small screen origins. Still, it’s impossible not to be deeply affected by the imagery on display, which is numbing, traumatizing and deeply unpleasant, precisely as it should be.
Vital Statistics
PURGATORY (CHISTILISHCHE)
ORT Video
Director/Producer/Screenwriter: Aleksandr Nevzorov
Cast: Aleksandr Baranov, Sergey Bogdanov, Zed Lorshoonoff, Aleksandr Makarov, Dmitriy Nagiev, Aleksandr Ort, Sergey Rost, Aleksandr Shekhtel, Viktor Stepanov, Aleksey Vasilev