WINDHOEK– Germany in May 1945, four days before the end of the Second World War: A Russian reconnaissance patrol occupies an orphanage on the Baltic coast and tries to come to an arrangement with the residents.
A German Army unit still resides on the beach, getting ready to defect to Denmark. Both sides are tired of fighting – only a 13-year-old orphan wants to be a hero and tries to provoke a confrontation between the wartime enemies. But the categories “friend” and “foe” have long lost their function according to war propaganda. The situation escalates nonetheless, because morality and immorality are not bound to nationalities. A film about and against war, improbable and yet based on a true story featuring at the Goethe Centre next Thursday.
Four (4) Days in May was originally Aleksei Gustov’s project, who plays the captain in the film. He co-produced and came upon the story in some Russian archives. Achim von Borries did a major rewrite of Gustov’s rough draft and decided to tell the story from the perspective of the 13-year-old-boy. “I think we managed to make the film as intimate and as personal as possible by using this child’s perspective… Like every good war film, it is a film without war, because the most boring thing about this genre are the battles themselves.” (Achim von Borries)
And so 4 Days In May tells the story of the passion of a misdirected child, but also of a secret, unmentioned adoption. Peter lost his father in the war; Kalmykow lost his son. When the naively patriotic boy asks about the captain’s heroic acts, Kalmykov explains: if his son had become a good doctor, that would have been truly heroic. Again and again, the film focuses on the breaking down of notions of the enemy in troubled times. Even the classical music that repeatedly resounds from the out-of-tune piano suggests a world looking for its lost harmony, as do the birds in the sky migrating to the East, watched by the homesick Russian soldiers.
Early on in the film, one sees the Russian soldiers taking an employee at the orphanage prisoner and transporting her away; Achim von Borries shows courage by reminding of the many stories of abduction and rape. He neither wishes to candy-coat nor make the story more extreme than it is, but tries to transcend it. This is also reflected in the way he deals with language: its barriers can be penetrated – Peter and the female head of the orphanage also speak Russian. Kalmykow explains he is from Leningrad; the woman tells him she’s from St Petersburg. The official speech conventions lose their power at the decisive moment, however.