"Franz + Polina" An excellent foreign flick!

                                          SPOILER ALERT!!!

   

   I love World War II stuff. Documentaries, Books, and Films! Last night I took the time to watch a Russian film on YouTube titled "Franz + Polina" and I'm glad I did! The film is a love story that takes place in "White Russia" or Belarus during the time of, you guessed it, World War II! It starts off with a German Waffen SS(the military branch of Himmler's SS) unit occupying a local Belorussian village where a girl named Polina lives with her mother. Polina's father and brother have left to fight in the Red Army, as have most of the men in the village, while others have taken to the woods to either hide from the occupying Germans or to fight with the Partisans. Franz, an SS-Schütze or Private, is infatuated with Polina although they do not understand one another and continues to flirt with her(who flirts back with him) despite his SS-Unterscharführer or Sergeant's disapproval. Franz and the Sergeant have also been staying at the home of Polina and her mother, who cook for them and in one scene, hold up mirrors for them to shave with in the morning. 

    The Sergeant tells Franz not to take things so serious with Polina and informs him that he will have her the next day, however, Franz is in love with Polina and cannot help but take things serious with her. The next day arrives and Franz, the Sergeant, and all of the other Waffen-SS soldiers get dressed up in their uniforms and go on a march. Polina is impressed by Franz's appearance in uniform saying that he looks like "a shiny copper coin" and is unaware what is to come. The Sergeant and Franz stop by Polina and her mother's house for breakfast and the Sergeant get's onto Franz for not keeping his eye on Polina insisting that he will have her in an hour. The hour comes and suddenly all of the SS soldiers begin to massacre all of the villagers and burn the houses to the ground. The Sergeant starts shooting at Polina's mother and tells Franz to rape Polina but Franz shoots the Sergeant instead and Polina puts him in a hiding place with her and her mother under the floor of their home. The SS then murder everyone in the village and burn all of the homes to the ground and leave.

    Franz then throws his Waffen-SS uniform away and puts on some of Polina's brother's clothing and she hides him in a nearby cemetery. Polina's brother and other soldiers come and visit the village and find his mother and Polina. He asks her where her "German" is but she says that the Partisans took him. He then tells her that if they didn't take him far, to tell him to leave and then leaves with the other Red Army soldiers. Polina and Franz then bury the bones of some of the villagers for her mother who then sits by a tree and passes away. Franz and Polina then pack up some food, clothing, and tools and go to the woods. There in the woods they find an empty hut where they stay for a couple of days. Franz goes down to the river to catch fish when Polina is attacked by wild dogs. Franz comes back just in time to save her and get her to safety in the hut where they make love and she becomes pregnant. 

    The next day some Belorussian collaborators find them and bring them to another Waffen-SS unit. Polina tells them that Franz is her mute brother and Franz pretends not to be able to speak. The collaborators are ordered to let them go but when they bring them to the edge of the woods, the collaborators shoot Polina and Franz gets away. He finds a cart where some local people were murdered by the SS and takes it and puts Polina on it. He then blends into a group of refugees who get to a town but are kept out by the Wehrmacht and more collaborators. A doctor checks on Polina but cannot help her because he has no medicine or supplies. Franz then goes to the town and kills one of the Wehrmacht soldiers and takes his uniform and buys the medicine she needs. When he gets back a young boy is amazed that a mute man could get the medicine needed until Franz falls to the ground, sick with typhoid fever and starts to mutter things in German, thus giving up his true identity. 

    Time passes and they both get well and Polina says that she told the people the truth about Franz and what he did for her mother. Instead of killing them, the people have allowed them to join them except for the young boy who was amazed about Franz getting the medicine. This boys family was murdered by the Germans and has vowed to kill Franz with a gun that he traded his father's watch for. The boy's godmother tries to stop him but the boy has already set his mind to it. Polina gets dehydrated due to her pregnancy and Franz goes to the river to get her water when he turns to see the boy pointing the gun at him. Franz says the boys name in surprise and tells him the water is for Polina. In the last scene of the movie, the boy brings the buckets of water to Polina and starts to stroke her face until she realizes who it is and that he has killed Franz and starts to scream.

    I thought this was a great film! I love when films use the actual languages of the characters rather than having everyone speak the same language like Valkyrie or The Longest Day. A 20th century Romeo and Juliet is a good way to describe this film and I totally give it an easy five stars! Also I really enjoyed the tragic ending because happy endings are for children's stories in my opinion! Check this movie out if you haven't seen it already! You can find it with English subtitles on YouTube right now!

"THE EARTHLINGS" A Short Story by Jason Fontaine

THE EARTHLINGS
By Jason Fountain


    I remember when the Earthlings first came to visit our home planet Monde. I was amazed to learn that there was another race of human that developed independently from ours elsewhere in the cosmos. I mean, they are exactly like us! The only difference is that they have existed much longer than us and are far more technologically advanced than we are as they can travel the stars and we can not. They also have many other subtle differences like the clothing they wear. Here on planet Monde everyone dresses differently and wears very colorful clothing but the Earthlings all wear pretty much the same green suit with black boots and steel hats. The only differences between each of them are the buttons and patches on their clothing.
    There are also another group of Earthlings that wear a suit like the others but instead of it being green, it is black and the symbols are different on their suits. The leaders wear a brown suit. That is, at least some of them. The main leader of theirs wears different things on different days. Some days he wears a white suit, some days a brown one, and on some days he wears a really fancy looking suit that doesn't have any buttons except for one on what they call the lapel of the suit. The button has the symbol of the humans on it and it is a symbol that every human wears on their outfit with no exceptions. Some of the humans wear the symbol all over their outfits in different places. They are all very friendly, though and we are all very happy to have them here with us to help teach us how to better improve our planet technologically like theirs. They say that their planet isn't all that great really because of something they call a "war" that happened on their planet years ago but personally I think they are just being modest. I'm sure that planet Earth is the most glorious planet in the cosmos!       If they teach us just a small percentage of their technologies and traditions, I think we will be much better off because they really are so much more disciplined and organized than us Mondians. It was a great thing those Earthlings did by coming here to our planet I tell ya! It's probably the best thing that has ever happened to us in the history of our planet! Anyways, let me start from the beginning...

    It was just a regular day like any other day here on Planet Monde. The weather was beautiful and every face had a smile on it just like mine. I was walking on the sidewalk downtown when suddenly I saw a crowd of people standing outside of the television store. The television is a really cool invention and it has only been around for just a couple of months here on Planet Monde and I assumed that there must be something really interesting on so I jogged on over to see what all of the excitement was about. I couldn't get a good view of the television or hear what it was saying because of all of the Mondians standing in the way talking to each other about some type of flying machine. I was intrigued to know what it was exactly that they were talking about, maybe they invented a new helicopter and were showing it on the television or maybe the man from East Esserton finally invented that aeroplane thing that he had been talking about to the newspaper reporters.
    I had to know so I nudged and squeezed my way through the crowd of eager Mondians to see what all this excitement was about. Finally when I made my way to the front of the crowd I could see on the television the leader's palace and things hovering in the sky around it. They were round and I heard the news reporter say that they were called flying saucers. They all had the same symbol on the sides of each flying saucer and some of them began to land near the leader's palace in our capital city of Mondia. Suddenly the camera focused onto a group of the flying saucers in particular that were grounder and that appeared to be opening. After a minute or two of no activity, people that looked just like us began to emerge from the saucers and exit the grounded saucers.
   They all wore the same green outfits with black boots and steel hats and they all wore an assortment of different buttons and patches with different Earthling symbols on them. They all ran from the crafts holding some long device that appeared to be made of wood and metal and they all ran to one area of the yard of the Leader's Palace where they all stood in lines completely still. One of the men with a different symbol on his shoulders and shirt collar with a cloth hat instead of steel like the others was walking past the other men standing in line and he seemed to be inspecting the others. Finally another grounded saucer opened and three Earthlings dressed differently from the rest exited the flying saucer and began to approach the others who all snapped themselves upright and stood even more still and straighter than they had before with one arm raised in some type of gesture of respect for the three other men who had just exited the saucer. The man who was walking and inspecting the other men even stood still with his arm raised in respect for the three men who must be some type of leader of the Earthlings. The three Earthlings that approached walked in a triangular formation with one walking in the front and two walking behind him. The three men wore different outfits amongst themselves with the one in the front wearing a long black coat with a cloth hat similar to the hat that the man who inspected the others men in steel hats had been wearing except the color was brown instead of green. The two men that walked behind the man in the long coat wore different colors with one wearing brown and one wearing black. They both wore cloth hats similar to the man walking in front of them but the man wearing black had a black hat and the man in brown had a brown hat that was shaped slightly different from the other's. These three Earthlings must be leaders more important than the first leader that I had observed.
    I had enough of watching the television with the others and went walking to see several different types of spacecraft besides the flying saucers flying through the sky and hovering over various parts of the city. Soon I saw some of the spacecraft lower themselves and land in the middle of our city streets. The spacecrafts began to open and more and more Earthlings exited from the craft and ran to stand in some type of formation along the sidewalks. This caused a problem with our transportation system but nobody seemed to mind so much as they stood in awe of these god-like Earthlings. The tops of the spacecrafts began to open and giant television screens lifted up out of the tops of the craft and suddenly an image of The Leader sitting with the Leader of the Earthlings in the long black coat appeared on the screen.

"Great news!" The Leader Announced.

"The Leader of the Earthlings has promised to bring about a new age for us on our planet Monde!"

"He has offered to teach us cures for any ailments we may have, great technology that we never imagined before, and a great new universal philosophy to adhere to."

 "We will be able to travel back into time to be with our ancestors he says!"

 "It is truly a great period in history for us all!"

"The Leader of the Earthlings has promised to take each and every last one of us Mondians on a tour of the cosmos and a tour of the technologically superior Planet Earth!"

"He apologizes that the only way that we can all be transported en masse will be on cattlecraft, though we do not see any need for him to apologize as a cattlecraft seems most appropriate from the images he has shown me of the craft."

 "Everyone is allowed to bring one bag of clothing and anything else that they might want to bring with them on the journey and you all have exactly one hour to prepare before we all leave on our tour of the cosmos."

 After the announcement a countdown from 60 minutes began on the screen and everyone scrambled to their homes to gather up their bag of clothing and whatever else they needed for their trip across the cosmos to the planet Earth. I got to my home in five minutes flat and grabbed my bag and put in a couple outfits, hygiene products, and some pictures of my family and I to show any curious Earthlings I might meet when I arrive at Planet Earth. As soon as my bag was packed, I left my home and saw these giant spacecraft which must be the cattlecraft that the Leader had spoken of. The cattlecraft were too large to land in our city streets and stayed up in the sky hovering over the city's buildings. A large door opened and a smaller shuttle craft began to transfer us in small groups from the ground up into the cattlecraft. I myself don't understand why the Leader of the Earthlings apologized that we had to be transported in these craft because first of all, I have no idea what a cattle is to begin with and second, it looks like a nice and large spacecraft designed to fit us all inside of it. The large television screens that came from the tops of the spacecraft that landed in our city's streets were now instructing us to stay calm and to board the shuttlecraft in an orderly fashion. The voice sounds like a machine talking and it is now telling us about our journey to come.

 "Once you are all on board the cattlecraft you will be taken across the cosmos to see the beauty of our galaxy."

 "When you arrive on our home Planet Earth, you will marvel in the cleanliness and technological wonders of our beautiful planet."

 "Because our planet is very clean, we will have to make one stop before we reach Planet Earth for sanitation purposes where you will briefly enter the sanitation chamber and come back out perfectly sanitized and ready to visit our beautiful and clean Planet Earth."

 "After your visit to our home Planet Earth, you will never be the same."

 "We hope you have a wonderful time on your trip and we wish safe travels to you all."
    The announcement began to repeat again as a shuttlecraft landed in front of my area of the street. I boarded the shuttlecraft with a small group of other excited Mondians and we began to lift up off of the ground towards the large cattlecraft in the sky. As we approached our designated cattlecraft, I saw the final shuttle pull away from another cattlecraft and watched the doors close to reveal the glorious symbol of the Earthlings emblazoned across the door.

I know that the Earthlings are going to take great care of us...