While I can understand why Arsenal is considered historic, it has not aged well. The scenes at the beginning of the film are confusing - we expect the film to be about the mother, only to find out she has relatively little to do with the film. By the time the main protagonist (Timosh) is established, a good chunk of the movie has passed. The acting is usually superb but drops when it should be at its strongest. It is hard to take the scene with the laughing gas seriously given how obviously the man is just acting. He doesn't move his arms or his body, and seems to only fall to the ground when he's taken off and put back on his glasses a certain number of times. Thankfully, scenes at the end of the movie redeem this level of acting. I'm also not sure what genre the director was going for. The military scenes suggested it to be an action movie, but besides those, I didn't see anything exciting. The movie then tries to be dramatic when one of the characters is about to shoot another in the back of the head, but can't manage. This had to be my favorite scene simply due to its originality. Even then, during the final few moments, when Timosh is being shot at, I couldn't take the movie seriously. His inability to die only reminded me of the final scene from V for Vendetta, and I found myself comparing him to a Ukranian V, with much less impressive equipment. This was the defining moment where the audience has to admit the movie is just too distant from modern audiences to be relatable. Everything it tries to do has already been re-done with better filming, special effects, and actors. It falls flat.

Don't be discouraged by this Soviet film's age or obscurity - it is one of the finest movies ever made, and it stands alongside Carl Theodore Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," as the most modernist film of the 1920's. This is a spectacular visual achievement, and its visionary conception of cinema is moderinism that we've still failed to catch up with. Unlike most recognized masterpieces of Soviet silent cinema (e.g. "The Battleship Potempkin," "Earth," "The End of St. Petersburg," etc.), however, "Arsenal" is a surprisingly approachable film, and its strangeness and abstraction are consistently fascinating. Originally intended as a propaganda film, "Arsenal" is the second component of director Alexander Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," and it details an episode in the Russian Civil War (~1918) in which the Kiev Arsenal workers aided the Bolshevik army against the ruling Central Rada. Dovzhenko's approach is somewhat similar to Sergei Eisentein, in that he relied heavily on montage, but his pace was less frenetic, and his Expressionism was more exaggerated. As detailed in the film's academic commentary, Dovzhenko was previously a political cartoonist, and you can see traces of this background in "Arsenal." The characters in this film are caricatures, sometimes grotesque and sometimes funny. Similarly, there is a strangeness and remoteness in "Arsenal," which makes the film's few intentionally lucid passages quite dreamlike. The DVD commentary is concise and informative, and a terrific primer for the first time viewing. If you have any interest in silent cinema, modernism, or film as art, "Arsenal" is a film you SHOULD NOT MISS. ---|--- Was this review helpful?

For several years I had a decent quality print on video and was always fascinated by this film. Very few motion pictures are as visually striking and intense, but little of the story came through. I just purchased the DVD and the audio commentary track by Vance Kepley really illuminated "Arsenal". Undoubtedly the finest commentary I've yet heard. If this classic movie isn't your cup of tea, get the DVD anyway. Dovzhenko was an artist like few others. His work really deserves rediscovery; hopefully future releases of "Zvenigora", "Earth" and "Aerograd" will have Kepley's commentary as well. But even as they are, Dovzhenko's films are truly essential.

While often a bit obscure, this Dovzhenko classic is also filled with interesting and often thought-provoking images and themes. "Arsenal", as with his better-known feature "Earth", defies easy description. "Earth" is probably the more artistic of the two, but "Arsenal" is more complex, and it might also be a little closer - at least in places - to a conventional narrative.The first ten minutes or so of "Arsenal" are quite abstract, with a succession of mini-montages depicting a variety of subjects. It would be hard, and perhaps inadvisable, to assign a specific meaning to all of the symbols, but they are clearly meant to convey some general ideas that apply to the story that follows, which is set in the Ukraine as World War I (or the Great War) is coming to an end.The war sequences might be the most memorable part of the movie, and the chilling "laughing gas" sequence is a more compelling comment on war than are the great majority of complicated carnage-filled scenes in other movies.The main story starts with the demobilization, and it is clearly influenced by Dovzhenko's own perspective. He does his very best to resolve two seemingly contradictory priorities, with his devotion to the Ukrainian people and his support for the Soviet state. He uses all his skills, with interesting montages and other techniques, including some creative camera angles that would even have impressed Orson Welles.As politics, not all of it is convincing by any means, but as cinema, it is quite interesting, and at times it provides good food for thought. The specific issues considered in the film may be limited to their own time and place, but in asking what is best for his people, Dovzhenko also raises some broader issues that allow the movie to retain some relevance in later eras as well.