Made in the final months of the Soviet Union, the film follows three young Red Army recruits, Zyrin, Belikov and Elin. The film has no narrative structure and rather than telling a story uses vignettes to show the conditions in which Soviet army recruits lived.
Cast
Vladimir Zamansky as The Unknown Man
Armen Dzhigarkhanyan as Brigade Commander
Oleg Vasilkov as Elin
Roman Grekov as Zub
Valeriy Troshin as Kudrin
Aleksandr Chislov as Zyrin
Mikhail Solomatin as Belikov
Sergey Romantsov as Titarenko
Sergey Bystritsky as Senior Lieutenant
Elena Kondulainen as Death
Oleg Khusainov as Angel
Sergey Semyonov as Captain
Maria Politseymako as woman in the field
Vadim Piyankov as lance-corporal
The author's reaction
Yuri Polyakov said the movie was bad, but he begged the director to give him the movie DVD when traveling abroad, to lecture at US universities.