After
Nazi Germany attacked Poland in 1939, the Soviet Union demanded
military bases from Finland. Helsinki refused, whereupon the
Red Army attacked Finland in November 1939 in what is known
as the Winter War. Using skis, the Finnish army held back
the Soviets for several months but ultimately surrendered,
signing a treaty of peace in March 1940 that gave up Eastern
Karelia, whereupon some 420,000 Karelians fled to western
Finland. In 1941 Finland allied with Germany, and while the
Reischswehr invaded the Soviet Union, Finland advanced in
midsummer 1941 to recover the territory previously lost in
Eastern Karelia. Ambush, directed by Olli Saarela,
is the story of one episode in what Finland calls the Continuation
War. At the beginning of the film begins, Lt. Eero Perkola
(played by Peter Franzén) receives an order to lead
his platoon to Repola, a military encampment where he fortuitously
encounters his girlfriend Kaarina Vainikainen (played by Irina
Björklund), a member of the Auxiliaries who are attending
to the men in uniform and the casualties. He then asks the
commanding officer of the base to evacuate the women in case
of a future Soviet attack. The commander agrees, but he then
presses Eero to volunteer to lead his platoon to hold a riverbed
at Koroly, indicating that he has incomplete intelligence
regarding where Soviet troops are, a military situation familiar
to those who have recently seen We Were Brothers.
Eero and Kaarina then part in opposite directions. Tuomas
Kantelinen's music, a cross between Sibelius and Tschaikovky,
already tells us that tragedy lies ahead. En route, a group
of Soviet Partisans ambushes the caravan of Auxiliaries. Although
Kaarina is the only survivor, Eero is informed that she died
by a courier who delivers new orders -- to bicycle to Koroly
on a lake and then to report on locations of Soviet troops,
if any. Eero at first reflects on his lost girlfriend but
soon leads his men, though he dreams of Kaarina and sheds
tears from time to time; a sensitive young man in the beginning,
he commands with increasing brutality, presumably to avenge
her death. Several men in Eero's unit die as they proceed.
Simo Kappinen (played by Tommi Eronen) trips, demonstrating
fear, and is sent back to Repola alone, but Partisans shoot
him dead along the way. Tapio Heikkinen (played by Petri Manninen)
fails to exercise caution when he is warned that an abandoned
house may be boobytrapped. Corporal Jussi Lukkari (played
by Kari Heiskanen) shoots two prisoners, Partisans who were
left for dead, provoking Sergeant Unto Saarinen (played by
Taisto Reimaluoto) to complain to Eero that the executions
were immoral. Eero then sends Saarinen forward as a scout
along a bridge, but enemy soldiers open fire, and Saarinen
is shot, presumably falling into a watery grave, though he
appears alive later. After the platoon reaches Koroly, having
encountered little resistance, Eero is ordered to lead his
men to join the Finnish Army at Virta; to do so, they must
fight through the rear of enemy lines. Many die, but Ville
Snicker (played by Arttu Kapulainen) dies while covering the
survivors with a machine gun as Eero leads them in swimming
across the lake to join the Finnish Army. In the battle Eero
is hit and is momentarily unconscious, so when his unit reaches
safety, he is transferred to a makeshift hospital, where he
encounters Kaarina, also a survivor, and the film ends as
they embrace. With a minimum of actual violence, Ambush
is almost an antiwar film, demonstrating through the conflict
between Lukkari and Saarinen the way in which war can turn
young men into savages, separating those who are mentally
ill equipped from those who become obsessively vicious, with
most somewhere on the scale between. The film is based on
Life for Fatherland, a novel by Antti Tuuri, who cowrote
the screenplay along with director Olli Saarela. MH
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