Watched: Alexander Nevsky

So even though I still think this movie is extremely boring and propagandistic (it took me about 4 separate viewings to get all the way through it), I think I can at least understand why it is considered so important and influential and even called Eisenstein's masterpiece (as opposed to Battleship motherfucking Potemkin, another movie that I hated every time I had to watch it in a film class, despite its historical significance). When you finally get past all the Russia vs. German "history" in the first half an hour of the film, the rest is straight up an hour-and-change-long battle scene and from watching, seems to be the great-granddaddy of every other epic war movie (I'm looking at you, Alexander, Troy, Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven, 300, Gladiator, The Ten Commandments, Lord of the Rings, et al). It's got the cast of thousands (these days done digitally, although the presence of actually bodies is somewhat impressive even if the manner of showing "fighting" still has a long way to go from Alexander Nevsky to Spartacus: Blood and Sand standards of insane realism/stylization), the themes of encroaching oppression and the enemy/invader as ruthless child-killing wife-stealing maniacs, the small subplot of the everyman romance, and the incorruptible, fearless leader (who also just happens to be the best-looking actor in the cast, surprise!). I don't know how many movies before this one went into depicting war in such detail (the only one I can recall seeing off the top of my head is motherfucking Birth of a Nation, another bear to get through, and maybe Cecille B. Demille's 1923 The Ten Commandments) but whether or not this movie is the first, it still really congeals together all the elements that make up the epic war film template. So... well done there. Now here's to never watching this again.

In conclusion, I have no restraint when it comes to parentheses.