Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

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

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten" or "Ballad of the Little Soldier" is a West German television documentary film from 1984, so this one is also already over 30 years old. It was written and directed by Werner Herzog and Denis Reichle and I am sure the involvement of the former is one of the main reasons why this film is still fairly known today and can also be found in the internet. It is the story of Nicaraguan children who have to fight as soldiers in battles because every soldier counts when it comes to victory. But is victory really achievable? Or is just wasting the lives of innocent teenagers? Decide for yourself! My own opinion is that children should never be part of a military force. (We all know Hitler did the same when his grown-up soldiers had almost all died or been captured.) Wars are already bad enough when grown-ups die I think. Admittedly, I personally did not really feel as if this film was a whole lot about Nicaragua, but it was more about the characters and could have taken place at other locations in the world too. That's not a problem at all though. I still believe it was a good watch. It is not one of my favorite Herzog films, but he delivers quality here as usual and I recommend the watch. It's also good that he and Reichle did not decide to stretch the film to a point where it would drag, but instead go for a fairly short film that easily stays under the 50-minute mark from me. Thumbs up.

zimmyfan66 "It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded." --W. Somerset Maugham.Werner Herzog's 45 minute documentary succinctly captures the reality of this achingly honest quote from W. Somerset Maugham. One moment in particular hammers it home. From an eager distance, Herzog's camera watches as a hired instructor bellows quick commands and warnings to cherubic soldiers waiting in line to test out a mortar. We can see down the line as each face reveals itself from behind the comrade's head in front of them. We see, despite the violent circumstances and the impoverished economic situation of those soldiers, delighted white marbles smiles and we recognize in that moment the happy-go-lucky face of childhood. We know, from our own experiences of childhood, from within and from observation, that these children cannot possibly grasp the full extent of their presence, right there in that field, dressed in scroungy uniforms and preparing for the use of weapons, no less. They only know that, as soon as their turn comes, they will get to operate an explosive weapon and behold its trajectory and its landing without the added screaming and carnage of battle.What eventually happens is devastating. In one of the many shots capturing pairs of mortar operators, an extremely young soldier, perhaps only 7 or 8, is fumbling with the shell as his comrade holds the cylinder upright. The shell refuses to slide with ease down the tunnel of the mortar and there's an uneasy few seconds where you're certain something is going to go wrong, particularly when the instructor only minutes earlier warned the young soldiers about the dangerously sensitive fuses on the mortar. Instead of facilitating the situation safely, the instructor gives the little boy an adult sized wallop on the shoulder. The shell eventually finds its way down the tunnel, shooting right back out with a soft pop and a cloud of smoke. Immediately afterward the instructor gives the hesitant child soldier yet another wallop before the child soldier and his comrade go to the line where the soldiers who already shot a mortar round wait for further instructions.In the moment of preparing that shell, Herzog closes in on that child soldier's face. In the blink of an eye we see that child's face go from eager anticipation to one of absolute despondency. What's terrifying is that this despondency arises not out of the child's realization that he just participated in the testing of a deadly weapon, but out of a reprimand from an older soldier. In this moment we see just how attentive those little ears, how expectant those little eyes, and how heartbroken those little bodies are. They, like all children (despite rough exteriors in some), are little followers, wanting only to please their instructors (both military and family) and be good sons and brothers. Their leaders, the hired instructors who teach the boys to shoot, march and stomp, are would-be older brothers. The tragedy is that in reality they turn out to be nothing more than enforcers of code whose necessity is only explained in terms of vengeance. When Herzog asks a child soldier why he wants to kill other little boys, the child soldier responds with something to the effect of, "They killed my mother and my brother and now I want to kill." These boys can only understand (and then still so very poorly) war in terms of schoolyard conceptions of an eye-for-an-eye and being brave. They are vulnerable, and, in one instructor's words, "pure" and ready to accept training with an "uncorrupted" (here meaning "unquestioningly willing") constitution. We thought we knew what it meant for a soldier to be called "fodder" but we don't really know until we see Herzog's close ups of the child soldiers in formation with instructors standing by and basically advertising their worth as killing machines. And if this fails to disturb us, then Denis Reichle's (co-director) postulations on the situation will. From behind the formation he looks down on the backs of the heads of the child soldiers. Turning away from them and looking off to the distance, Reichle tells us that this experience is too much for him because when he was only 11 he was recruited to fight for the Nazi's in their last hold over Berlin. "A lot of us died," Reichle says, "and it's hard not to see these children as already dead." He is right to say this because, in so many ways, these children ARE already dead. Their youths have been robbed from them, much more prematurely than we in privileged societies know and understand. Their parents, their siblings, their friends have been robbed from them. Their sense of safety in their homeland has been robbed from them. And just like the village woman with a ransacked house that Herzog interviews, they have been robbed of damn near everything except their fragile, saddened lives.Herzog conveys all of this so simply and without affectation. The result is a deeply disturbing and wholly necessary film that tells a classic story (the stealing of youth by war and other destructive adult activities) in a singularly devastating way. You won't be the same after seeing it.

FilmCriticLalitRao For 'Ballad of the little soldier',Werner Herzog worked with Denis Reichle who fought against the Russian army.There is a brief description of him talking about what he experienced as a child soldier.The film gains its force through the portrayal of young children who have been employed as soldiers by Miskito Indians who fight against Sandinistas.During the course of talks with these child soldiers,it is revealed that many of them chose to take up arms in order to avenge their family members who were killed by Sandinistas.Watching small children learning to shoot guns,one is reminded of the role weapons play in killing even innocent souls who ought to go to school or play.It has been exactly three decades since documentary film 'Ballad of the little soldier' was made by Werner Herzog in 1984.It is hailed as one of the most important works of cinema about the use of children as soldiers.This film has not at all lost its relevance as there are still numerous wars being waged in different parts of the world where children are involved as little soldiers.

tomgillespie2002 German film-maker Werner Herzog is well-known for his obsession with, well, obsession, finding joy and producing some great documentaries over the years championing the quirkiness of the human spirit. With Ballad of the Little Soldier, the focus is not on the idiosyncratic but on the child soldiers serving in Nicaragua fighting for the native Miskito Indians against the oppressive Sandinistas. Although he may deny it, this is Herzog's most political film to date. With co-director Denis Reichle, who served the Nazi's in the Volkssturm, Herzog's interviews various Miskito inhabitants who have fallen victim of the brutal Sandinistan regime.At only 45 minutes long, Herzog and Reichle manage to paint a large picture of what life was like for the Miskito's. A woman wails about her family, butchered at the hands of the Socialist Sandinistas, whose government initiative to move the Miskito's into civilised society has led to their villages being sacked and torched, and the mass murder of men, women and children. The persistent nature of Herzog and Reichle's interview techniques do often make things uncomfortable, but it certainly makes for devastating viewing.Narratively, the film is all over the place. The cinema verite style contradicts the film's title, shifting focus away from the children far too often in favour of the adult soldiers, who march past the camera with similar resigned, weathered expressions. But this is still powerful stuff, with Herzog's narration lending the film a dream-like quality amidst the seriousness of the subject matter, and Reichle's recollection of his time in the Volksstrum as a child making for difficult viewing, especially told in the context of the events that were unfolding in Nicaragua. Although this is far from Herzog's best documentary, he manages to achieve more in 45 minutes than most documentarians could only dream of.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com