I saw Ballad of a Solder, may be 40 years back, when I was a school student. I was encouraged to see this movie by my elder sister who was an ardent movie goer. She saw a lot of films ranging from Uttam-Suchitra’s romantic melodramas, Ray’s classics, hilarious comedies of Jerry Lewis and Tony Cartis, Holywood’s blockbuster like Guns of Navaron, Roman Holiday and world classics like Bicycle Thief and so on. She vividly told me about serene agony of the mother waiting to receive his solder son at the end of World War II. She always talked about this film and I looked forward to see this film one day. Finally I saw it when this movie was rerun at Gulistan Cinema Hall. As I walked out of the cinema hall after watching the movie, I felt I was a different man.
Ballad of a Solder is regarded as one of world’s ten best movies. The list of the best movies includes Pather Panchali by Ray, Bicycle Thief by De Sica, Citizen Cane by Orson Wells and Battle Ship Potemkin by Sergai Bunderchook. Russian maestros like Gregory Chukhari who made Ballad of a Solder excelled in making anti-war movies. Other Russian anti-war movies like Fate of a Man and Cranes Are Flying are well-known in history of film making. It is known that what tremendous sacrifices Russian people made in World War II to bring it to its end. I heard that after World War II, Russia hardly had young and capable man-power left to till their lands and to run their factories. So it was quite natural for Russian maestros to send across anti-war message via their moving and compelling anti-war movies.
Ballad of a Solder is a heart-breaking as well as a lyrical poetic movie with a strong undercurrent of anti-war message. Nobody can forget the image of the sad but not without hope of the mother waiting for son’s come back home. This wait or expectation by a mother for her son is an enduring attribute of man-kind. We are not sure whether the son would return to the fold of his mother one day, but we know, the mother’s love for son would live for ever amid war, devastations and human tragedy.
Faruk Kader
Sydney
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Home Page Published on: 23-Jan-2013 
