Based on the novel Blizzard of Souls about the horrors of war seen through the eyes of a teenage Latvian soldier during World War I, this slice of brutal realism may not have the flashy panache of Christopher Nolan Dunkirk or the stylish cinematographic hijinks of 1917 but owes more to the bleak overtones of unrelenting brutality of a war film like 1993’s Stalingrad.
With an unremitting emphasis on the absurdity of war and the bafflingly thin line between friend and foe, The Rifleman follows 16-year-old Latvian Artur (Oto Brantevics) and his trials in battle, from his enlistment along with his sharpshooter officer father in the Russian Imperial Army fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. He eventually gets caught up in the aftershock of the 1917 Russian Revolution, where he finds himself refusing to join the Bolsheviks and is hunted down by his former comrades.
Director Dzinars Dreibergs excels at depicting the nuances of wintry battles and claustrophobic hand-to-hand combat of trench life and day-to-day life immersion in the constant soul-crushing stress of ground warfare. Although the film manages to capture a fairly broad panorama of war, the vantage point always stays tethered to the teenaged Artur and his coming-of-age story through baptism under fire in war and revolution. The human relationships in the film—even Artur’s relations with his commander father—seem underdone in favor of a broader sweep of war as being a collective effort but also intensely personal and introverted as well.
The Rifleman also tries to get across, with varying effectiveness, what seem like semi-realized statements on nationalist loyalties and duty to one’s motherland but also a sense that, in the end, it’s simply every man for himself. Definitely an original vantage point from the Eastern side of the Great War that is often neglected in popular film. A unique addition to film war, drama, and world cinema collections. History professors should consider screening teaching World War I with this film.