Names in Marble (2002)

Too much of everything

Excellent but underrated film

Awesome Movie

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The story is set in 1919, just after WWI has ended and the reds took over half of Europe. I wouldn't call them Russians, as you'll find out from the movie, that besides Russians there were Latvians and even Estonians in the red army. Unfortunately history repeats itself, in war it happens that brother fights against brother, or blood against blood.It's a patriotic movie, of course. Estonians, as many other nations in the world fought for their freedom. What I liked in this movie is that it gave back very well the atmosphere of that time (excellent photography, and CGI perhaps) and also depicted very nicely the Estonian coutryside. Watching this movie I felt the urge to visit this country. Also liked very much that the film didn't want to make heroes. In contrary, it showed the weekness of these young students, the fear they felt being in war, killing other people. They were just victims of the war.I bet this is one of the highest budgeted Estonian movies. But still very low budgeted comparing to American movies of the same category. So don't expect the same war scenes. However I liked it, as it is.Only thing I can criticize in this movie is that the story is a bit too simple, too obvious. That's why I rated it 7/10. However it's an outstanding movie.

A story of Estonian high school students who volunteer to defend their country from the Bolshevik invasion in 1918. The only reason to give this film 7 stars is the Estonian film industry context. For Estonia, this film is truly great. Not only it covers previously poorly presented (in the visual art) part of this country's history, it also is very well made camera work wise and the action scenes are done properly. But the director perhaps could have swapped some of the pathetic patriotism (obviously borrowed from the book the film is based on) for real-life attitude. I'll never believe that 17-year-old boys will be that desperately willing to sacrifice their lives and virtually act as if they long for the Red Army bullets. Natural human fear of death is what makes any war scene so much more realistic.

I think it's overrated. I'v seen it and, it has a lot of stupidity in it, may be it's because I'v read the novel what movie was based on as well, I may say that the novel was much better then movie. As it usually does. Another thing about this movie is, it's not quite honest politically. It has this "bad communists" and "good capitalists/nationalists" theme. Cruelty conducted by Estonias and Russian White Card who were the opponents to Soviets are not shown in the movie, even though crimes committed by Soviets are very realistically brought to us. There are some characters (the Finish guy for example) in the movie that are only there because they are suppose to "give credit and honer our allies", these characters have no real roll and they are absolutely unnecessary, but they are there, just show, that during that war, these country(s) and nations helped us in our fight for freedom. In the end, I'd say that the movie would have been much better, if didn't have to count on Estonian government founding, which was giving the money only if the movie is "historically educating". But it's still better then most of the Hollywood war movies. Actors do there job very good. And movie is based on very good novel, which sadly doesn't appear very well because of the "not very bright" scripting.

This movie is totally for people who like foreign movies. And it really is the best movie, shot in Estonia (though Tarkovski's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was also shot in Estonia) and by Estonians. I only disliked the ending, when the main character turned into a Rambo-like character. That was a shitty idea. A bigger budget would have given the movie something more, though it had a huge budget for an Estonian movie. Computer graphics was so good, that know one knows, there were any, actually they used CGI to hide things in city-scene, they copied some soldiers and they made other changes as well...And those who don't know about the war in the movies, should know, that there were similar wars in almost every Eastern-Europe countries between 1917-1920, cause Russia was weakened and unstable because of the World War I, and freedom fighters had good chances due that. 7.5/10