Talvisota

TALVISOTA, Finland's 1989 nominee for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, is a deeply moving, epic drama commemorating that country's heroic border stand against a massive Russian invading force during the Russo-Finnish War. However, one need not be a student of history to be thoroughly engrossed by TALVISOTA, which follows a single platoon into combat. These are not John Wayne-style supersoldiers charging the barricades, only farmers doing their patriotic duty with widely varying degrees of zeal.

Thrown together by chance, the platoon members are just beginning to become friends as, one by one, they die in combat. Martti (Taneli Makela) becomes the central figure by d...