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Red Army Film Analysis

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Many people experience stress while playing competitive sports. An immense amount of pressure is put on players from parents to crowds of cheering fans. These people are being pushed to the limit and are expected to perform their best; but what if instead of having the stress to perform the best for parents or fans, a player has to be the best for the sake of their government. In 2015, Gabe Polsky released Red Army a documentary analyzing how the Soviet Union Olympic hockey team’s success was directly connected to politics during the Cold War. Therefore targeting people that lived in the time of the Cold War to explain what the Soviet’s hockey program experienced. The film was in the perspective of the Soviet’s Red Army hockey team to expose …show more content…
He was born in Russia during the time of the Cold War when it was originally the Soviet Union. Polsky also played ice hockey as a boy causing him to want to know more about how the Cold War created an extremely strong relationship between government and hockey. The film focuses on the “Russian Five”, the five best players from the Red Army hockey team. Vladimir Krutov, Viacheslav Fetisov, Igor Larionov, Alexei Kasatonov, and Sergei Makarov were known as the “Russian Five”, the leaders of the Red Army hockey team, and at the time were thought to be the best five hockey players in the world. The documentary explores the men’s way to success as well as their hardships, but always comes back to the connection between hockey and government. Exposing how badly the Soviet Union wanted to prove that the Soviet’s way was the best, and only of doing …show more content…
He establishes a visual component with pictures of a large gloomy looking home that was heavily fenced. This building that appeared to be an extravagant home was actually a ‘hockey camp’ where the Soviet’s Olympic hockey team slept, ate, and practiced “11 out of 12 months of the year”. The government paid to create this large “camp”, proving how invested politics was with the Red Army hockey team. The team was forced to live in this home, away from friends and family, because the loss to the United States hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics. Then the film also showed the Red Army hockey team coming back to win it all in the 1984 Olympic Games. Polsky associates the ebullience of the time by playing the Soviet Union’s National Anthem in the background of the scene, connecting how team finally seemed to please the Soviet government. Even after winning gold in the Olympics, the team was put back into the ‘hockey camp’ which was then associated with somber music in the film’s background. The somber music which is associated with the house is ironic the government paid for this top notch facility to be built specifically for the team yet it’s despised by the players. The use of depressing pictures and music for the house, yet while winning gold the director’s use the National Anthem shows the strong feelings, both bitter and elated, that are tied to the

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