All language subtitles for Povinnost--Confession.1998.DVDRip.DivX.Part.03.Subs.EN

The State Film Committee
of Russia

Nadezhda Productions
St. Petersburg

Producer
Svetlana Voloshina

with the participation of
Lenfilm Studios

Alexander Sokurov
CONFESSION

from the diary
of a ship Commander

A cinematographic narrative
in five parts

Part Three

The plot and the characters
of this film

are creations of
the author's imagination.

Opposite the Commander
his friend was sitting.

They understood each other.

His friend too
commanded a ship.

In general,

I have achieved my aims.

If I think over my aspirations,
practically all have been realised.

There are things
to be proud of,

to be ashamed of.

If I had to give my life a mark,

it would be between
"satisfactory" and "good".

But the question is
what next?

Will I be able to manage it?

- Manage what?
- This life.

Find an aim

and fulfil it.

A new life?

Yes, but...

Will my strength hold out?
Today, I feel more and more certain

that it is somehow exhausted.

Enough for one more spurt,
no more.

What have you spent it on?

On this hounded animal.

There's a relation with death.

Life's almost finished.

How old are you now?

I'm 30 this year.
Only 30.

Before, 30 was something...

But that's half of one's life.
Statistically.

My own reckoning, too,

tells me I won't go
beyond 55-57 years.

Still less if I keep
ruining my health like this.

When you're squeezed dry,
they don't need you anymore.

They dump you.

Everyone forgets you.

That's it.

What have I done,

that's worthy...

There are people
whom I've brought up, as it were.

I didn't treat my own tutors well,

and I became like them myself.

When people go,
a year or 6 months later

they come to understand that
those 2 years - or 3 as it used to be -

weren't wasted.

It forges one's character.
The army is necessary.

Even such as it is now.

At least to produce people.

Not to brand them all alike.

Not in that sense.
In the sense that it hardens them.

Without that hardness
a man is incomplete.

Later something else may harden him.

But here is a standard machine

which hardens
or breaks people down.

It all depends.
If a person is strong enough

to handle it,
he becomes a man.

Otherwise he breaks down.

But he will break down anyway,
even without the army.

He'll break down

in civilian life.

Selection.

That's it.

Does it matter what it costs
to be formed like this?

It does.

It's like this.

Yes... You know...

You have a very particular
character.

The army is
a theatre of characters.

Nowhere else do men reveal
their characters so openly.

It's like a particular calibre
of weapon.

Our openness of character
makes us vulnerable.

Can you imagine
an officer in prison?

I'd never go.
It's not my way.

I'm not ready.

If your life becomes senseless,
you must put an end to it.

Old commanders told me

they used to carry
Makarov's bullet,

or rather a cartridge,
in their pocket.

It was about
10- 15 years ago.

A small cartridge

at hand...

for such occasions.

Pah! And that's it.

Anything but humiliation.

"Insulted and Injured".

Humiliated.
This is a humiliation.

Before, there were
educated people.

There have always been
cruel officers.

He listened to his friend

and he recalled

how one evening

he heard some wonderful music
on the radio.

He sat and listened
for a long, long time.

To begin with he felt fine.

Then he came to hate
both the ship

and his whole life,

everything, from his childhood
up to the present minute.

Then he remembered his mother,
his brother...

Where were they?

He thought of his town.

He remembered himself
freezing in the Naval School hostel,

sleeping with his hat on,

never thinking about the future.

He didn't know how to think.

Do you think 19th Century
Russian officers

were like us?

No, no.

Were they so different?

Radically different,
in everything.

Perhaps for them,

it was their work,

their vocation,
the realisation of their dreams,

a social position,
a way to develop...

their personalities.

For me of course these things
partly remain.

But mostly it is just
a means to survive.

To survive.

I don't live, I survive.

This is not life.

This is an existence.
Just survival.

Something pushes us
to survive, to survive, to survive.

Because you cannot do
anything else.

To feed your family.

Because...
you have to survive.

For a long time
I believed in my own strength.

I still believe in it.

To a lesser extent.

Hopelessness
stamps its mark on you.

You lose faith.
I used to believe before.

To believe in myself.

It always worked.

But perhaps, when it doesn't work,
you tend to forget.

Which commandments
do you hold dear?

All of them.

The Commander was grateful
to his friend

for sharing

the burden of his soul.

And he remembered how,
not long ago,

they put out with their two ships
to the White Sea.

They dropped anchor
by the shore.

And the bosun
from his friend's ship,

seizing the little steering wheel,

towed a raft of coal to the shore,

where

a deathly cold outpost
could be seen.

And it seemed to him
that the bosun

looked very much like
Dante's Charon.

Here they go along the shore.

A scent of fog in the air...

and here is the fog.

And then something begins,
something hard to forget.

The soldiers start
to carry the coal,

further away from the water,
nearer to the houses.

The settlement was empty.

Nobody came

out of the houses.

Watching this,

the Commander wanted to ask
the young soldiers:

"Boys,
what era do you come from?

Have I gone mad?

You, boy, come back,
you've lost your way.

You've strayed
into a different time.

The tyrant is dead.

You don't have to go on
any longer. "

It seemed to him he had
shouted all this many times,

but nobody heard him.

Then somebody shouted
that the tide was on the ebb.

With the remains of the coal

the raft returned to the ship.

Of course, they were freezing,

but come what may

they had to load again

and with the next tide

they had to go back
to the outpost.

The Commander was thinking
of what he saw around him.

What was needed,
he thought,

was not a reform,

but a complete overhaul.

We have to reconsider completely,

what the army should be like.

It must be reinvented,
starting from the beginning.

Perhaps our whole life, too,

needs this:

to be reinvented, one day,
starting from the beginning.

Perhaps we could invite someone

to help us invent a reasonable life?

wrote the Commander.

What binds us together?

We understand each other,

we trust each other.

We rely on each other,

we have lived
very similar lives,

and most likely
something similar awaits us both

in the future.

Just recently he had had a dream,

in which he was a very old man,

nearing the end,

but he still served
on the same ship.

And he understood
that what terrified him

was not becoming old,

but that his ship
did not become old,

the sea was not old,
the air around was young...

But he was old
and he knew all too well

the rest of the story.

Then he saw his friend's ship

moving along by a rocky shore.

It struggled against the squall

that was driving the ship
onto the rocks.

"The sea was big... "

The Commander smiled, remembering
this phrase of Chekhov's.

Towards evening, the bosun
and a seaman returned to the ship.

They had taken medical officers
on shore.

All the crew was on board.

We will stay the night here
anchored by the shore

till the storm is over
and in the morning,

God willing,
we will move on,

wrote the Commander.

He added a full stop,

and went to bed.

Serguei Bakai
The Commander

Camera
Alexei Fiodorov

Editor
Leda Semionova

Sound
Serguei Moshkov

Alexander Sokurov
CONFESSION

from the diary
of a ship Commander

End of Part Three

� Nadejda 1998

Subtitles: Alexei Jankowski

Subtitling by TVS - TITRA FILM