The Last Train

Pawel Fischbach ― an aging, overweight, and bespectacled military doctor who had served in World War I ― arrives in Ukraine on the last German train to make it through Soviet lines, moving against the tide of bodies. It is the bitterly cold winter of 1943, the exact midpoint of the Great Patriotic War when roles have been reversed and nothing is clear any longer: the invaders have become the besieged, soldiers have become invalids, advances have become retreats, frontlines have been erased. Fischbach makes his way to an isolated field hospital where he tries to minister to the wounded and dying. But when the hospital is about to be attacked by Soviet forces, an officer, who has remained at the hospital to look after one of his wounded men, throws Fischbach out into the killing frost and breaks his glasses. It is never certain whether this is an act of cruel mercy or merciless cruelty, but it condemns Fischbach and his companion, a skinny German mailman named Kreutzer, to wander without hope across an impassable landscape where it is impossible to identify or differentiate friend from foe. Their spatial disorientation becomes a visual marker of the ethical and moral chaos that has swallowed both of the warring sides. —rusfilm.pitt.edu