Best movie of this year hands down!

Good movie but grossly overrated

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Here we have thirteenth century view of a cold, harsh Russia that is about to be decimated. As the peasants await an attack a stone like hero emerges in Alexander Nevsky. This is an uplifting film in many ways because of the bleakness of existence. It was forged during a time when Stalin was trying to build bridges with the Nazis (how did that all work out). It is filled with anti-religious symbols and a secular plot. There is the great battle on the ice with the amazing Prokofiev score making it more and more provocative. The use of montage was Eisenstein's gift to the world of cinema here as there are cuts back and forth. The deaths of soldiers and the contorted faces show the sacrifice they make. Yes, it is propaganda. Yes, Stalin got his nose in this. But the individual scenes are masterworks of cinema, growing in intensity, a crescendo of jingoism and Russian salesmanship.

Hardly subtle. Eisenstein made this glorious piece of propaganda primarily as a warning to Hitler and the Nazis. It's about a time in the 13th century when Russia famously defeated the invading Germans under the leadership of Alexander NEVSKY, and there's no doubt as to just how evil these Germans are; at one point we see them throwing babies on the fire, (and in keeping with good Communist propaganda the Germans are the Christians forever flaunting their crucifixes). There's really nothing in the film except the call to arms and the battle that followed, (and its immediate aftermath), but what a battle it is, perhaps the finest and most famous ever put on film, (just as Prokofiev's accompanying score is among the finest ever composed for for a movie). There are images here as fine as any put on film and what other director handled crowd scenes in the way that Eisenstein did. It's not all perfect, of course. The dialogue is clunkier than the armor and the performances more wooden than the shields but primarily this is a visual epic and, as such, it's one of the classics of Russian cinema.

This might surprise some, but in this film, Eisenstein lays down the model for how to create a montage for a pre-modern battle scene. To my knowledge, all movies dealing with such scenes have used essentially the same template. This comes from the scenes when the Russian army is waiting for the Teutons coming over the ice. When you see this sequence, you will never see movies like Braveheart or the Two Towers the same way again. f Moreover, for those who care about such things, the movie actually manages to be truer to how battles were waged than many more contemporary films - you can actually tell how these forces fight on formation!Aside from these aspects, the film also showcases Eisenstein's directorial genius throughout, so it's really a must-see for anyone interested in his contributions to the development of cinema.

This is, arguably, one of the most influential and best movie pictures of all times. From camera work to acting and plot, nothing was left to chance, all the more so because Eisenstein was one of the most prominent cinema theorists of his time along with Dziga Vertov, another important Russian film maker (mainly documentarist). Unlike many have thought, this movie is definitely about the rise of Nazi Germany and a hymn to the revolution as well as an appeal to keep it true to its original spirit. Eisenstein said it himself as he wrote abundantly on movie making, cinema theory and his own work. Prince Alexander Nevsky was purposely chosen as he had also fought an important war to stop the expansion of southern nations, mainly Germans. One of the precious pearls in this movie is the portrayal of Teutonic knights, with their helmets, medieval in origin, true, but stylized, meaning to represent Nazi troops so as to make it easy for Russian folk to understand the analogy. Not surprisingly, George Lucas would, a few decades later, choose this grim guise to wrap Star Wars' evil personage, Darth Vader. That is precisely why Stalin had some reticence in allowing its release at a time when Nazi Germany was not yet, militarily wise, seen as a real threat. As for camera plans and angles they proved so influential as to pervade the works of the best of later film directors such as Leni Riefenstahl (yes, Nazi Germany favored film director), Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa or Manoel de Oliveira, the oldest film director still alive today (over 100 years old). From the simplest scenes to the battle ones this film is all about perfection and symbolism, drawing the viewer to Nevsky's side and devoiding some historical elements of its importance as is the case of religion which is conveyed as the fuel for Teutonic aggression and stripped of meaning in the Russian side. Most noticeably when, after winning the final battle, Russians enter a church but we never see a priest in sight (nor during the whole of the film, except the afore mentioned enemy ones), no religious symbols, neither does Eisenstein allows the public to so much as have a glimpse of the church's interior. And Yet Nevsky is a Russian saint which says a lot of communism's perspective on that matter. They were prepared to assimilate historical heroes so as to justify their own demeanor, stripping them of any esoteric or religious aura they might have. Ivan Grozny continues that work. In this particular movie Nikolai Cherkasov steals the screen with impressive energy and excellent acting. 10 out of 10 seems too dry for such a film as it will stay in your mind forever with its beautiful camera work and directing.