The “Good War” was so vast and intricate, its moral perspectives shift according to dozens of national points of view. 1944: The Final Defence lands us in the middle of Finland’s second battle for national survival against the Soviet Union, whose 1939 invasion had been startlingly defeated. The Finns were among the eastern nations who, caught between a rock and a hard place, then joined Nazi Germany in its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. In June 1944, D-Day meant little to Finns as the Soviets rolled back in, battering their defenders towards a line around the village of Tali.
Tali-Ihantala is one previous title of Ake Lindman and Sakari Kirjavainen’s 2007, low-key national epic, and Battle of Finland was almost its name here till a last-minute change of heart, reflecting the difficulty of engaging British viewers to whom this page of history is blank. But a war film of solidly old-fashioned virtues, emphasising strategic shifts and Finnish soldiers’ stoic professionalism, and recreating engagements with mundane realism more than CGI, makes you feel the Finns’ exhaustion as they struggle to fight the Soviets to a standstill again.
“Why do we have swastikas on our tanks? Is it because of the Germans?” a young soldier innocently asks, and if you pay close attention you may just discern a Luftwaffe presence among Finn pilots, but the awkward fact that we’re rooting for Nazi allies against our Soviet own is otherwise aggressively de-emphasised. This is the Nordic The Battle of Britain, a national heroic myth which is mostly true, almost certainly keeping Finland on the Iron Curtain’s freer side. It quietly glorifies warfare, because the alternative was defeat. If you have a sneaking regard for Saturday afternoon war films, this is an exotic and instructive new addition.
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