Cheap 100 Days Before the Command (DVD) (Hussein Erkenov) Price

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Customer Reviews of 100 Days Before the Command

Naked Boyhood At It's Best.
It is so refreshing to see a film that is very honest and forward when it comes to nudity in its natural context. It is such a break from the average "American Pie" film. Hopefully, with this film being shown and sold in this country, we are on our way to being relaxed and not up-tight with the body, just like the Europeans. It is refreshing to view a film where young boys are comfortable being naked with each other without all the sexual shallowness associated with nudity in other films. For those of you who are relaxed, non-puritanical, and not uptight about the anatomy, this film is for you. It's always a refresher to view European films that show nakedness in its natural context without any sexual hype.

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A documentary snapshot of Russian military life
Some may be looking for deep symbolism in "100 Days". <
>One reviewer called it surreal. <
> <
>It is very realistic actually, almost a documentary <
>about a real problem in Soviet and Russian society: <
>low morale and brutal treatment of recruits in an <
>Army dogged by a failed war in Afghanistan and the <
>collapse of the Soviet Union. To this day today's <
>Russian military has faced accusations of atrocities <
>committed in Grozny, Chechnya, which had been <
>tragic for both Russians and Chechens. <
> <
>There have been Red Army scandals involving the <
>deaths of young men at the hands of criminally <
>sadistic officers and NCOs. Drug abuse, alcohol <
>and even male prostitution have been known to occur <
>on Army bases. <
> <
>In one incident, commanding officers got recruits <
>to perform sexual services for a third party while <
>the officers took payment. There have been rapes <
>and desertion and suicide is not any surprising <
>event. <
> <
>Just to escape the stultifying army environment, <
>recruits had been known to get high off their <
>boot polish. Many have gone blind from such <
>dangerous activity. <
> <
>Viewers of "100 Days" who attempt to make sense of <
>all the nudity and strange broken down landscape <
>shouldn't trouble themselves too much. Such places <
>and activities literally did exist and were not such <
>uncommon sites around 1990. <
> <
>The boys rubbing eachother down nude is not just <
>some bizarre symbolism. Men of all ages did and <
>still do rub eachother down in the age old Russian <
>tradition of the "Banya" or communal bath and sauna. <
>To some Westerners it may look "gay" but it really <
>is a traditional Russian cultural phenomenon. <
> <
>The broken down, abandoned looking landscape was <
>not a surreal movie set designed for effect. Soviet <
>army bases were horribly dilapidated as much of Soviet <
>society was at the point of collapse. <
> <
>The translations are indeed peculiar as one review points <
>out. <
> <
>The original Russian title "Sto Dnej Do Prikaza" should <
>actually be translated as "A Hundred Days 'Til Orders Arrive" <
>(i.e. Orders to get discharged or move on to another <
>place) <
> <
>The producers maybe should have prefaced the film with some <
>background on Soviet/Russian society and culture back in 1990 <
>so the realistic episodes of the film would not seem meaningless <
>and "surreal."

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"Why are you goggling at me?"
The Soviet film "100 Days Before the Command" is the tale of the fate of a handful of raw young recruits who attempt to retain their humanity in a bleak, senseless, brutal militaristic culture. The film blends moments of brutality--a drunken officer returning at night and urinating on the face of a sleeping recruit, for example--with endless nude scenes. The director, Hussein Erkenov, states that the inclusion of nudity was a deliberate action aimed to show the recruits' vulnerability and innocence. Well, I can buy that, I suppose--the naked shower scenes, the sprawled, tangled half-naked bodies in the abandoned woodshed, and the prolonged soapy rub-downs etc do invoke a certain ethereal 'lost boys' quality (think Hylas and the Nymphs--but the nymphs are all male). However, after wrestling with the possibility that perhaps this film wasn't set in a basic training camp for recruits after all, but instead was perhaps a nudist colony, I was still left with a dull feature, sparse dialogue and quixotic editing. In Russian with English subtitles--displacedhuman