OVERVIEW:

The Deserter is a war drama set against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The main character is Pavel, a 20-year-old Russian man who joins the military in search of structure, power and identity. His best friend Alexei is his exact opposite, a politically conscious young man who is drafted against his will.

Pavel enlists voluntarily and also for money. At first glance, his decision is pragmatic, as it is motivated by the inevitability of conscription, poverty and the need to support his ill mother. But behind the outward motives lies his unconscious need for the father figure he never had, and as a result, drawing him to the state. Pavel is not, fundamentally, a violent man because he follows the state dogma not for what it says, but for what it deeply represents to him and what he does not deeply understand he actually needs. Things like order, certainty and power, are very difficult for humanity and are among the deepest problems we face. Alexei, on the other hand, resists war from the beginning. He is more expressive and self-aware, but is forced to serve a system he fundamentally does not accept and has to be a part of.

For both of them, war begins as something abstract and meaningless, carrying no meaning or logic behind it, but later becomes a moral nightmare. Pavel is confronted with atrocities committed by his own fellow soldiers and haunted by Alexei's emotional breakdown, and, as a result, is forced to confront the lies he has come to believe about strength, duty, and manhood. Due to guilt, Pavel makes the decision to desert and embarks on a difficult escape across frozen Ukraine, all the while undergoing spiritual purgatory.

The Deserter is not only a movie about war itself, and its atrocities, but also about the intolerance and mental structures that support the thinking that leads to war and fundamentally makes it possible. At the heart of the movie are the concepts of obedience, identification and suppression, and how seamlessly and covertly their disintegration can take place. Pavel ends up deserting the war, even though Alexei is the one who first wanted to escape it. Alexei is transformed to such a point that we have trouble recognizing him.

Deep down, Pavel is not a patriot: he simply is a child, in search of a structure that can contain his essence and for someone to tell him who and how to be in a world that has never given him a mirror. His voluntary enlistment in the army was not an expression of his political beliefs, but rather a deep psychic necessity, but to find an understanding of himself, and the world.

In this context, war becomes an expression of human emotion, where the illusion of symbolic order is shattered and its immense brutality is exposed. The father figure is represented by the military command and the ideological state, but instead of helping the man grow, it only offers submission. Its laws are not ethical but structural, because they are based on subordination rather than justice. In such a system, to obey means to exist, and to question means to fall apart. To desert in this screenplay does not conclude in about escape, but rather in renouncing what one believes is wrong and where one has been wrong, as if to look into the abyss of one's own constructed image, where one does not have to face the weight of uncertainty and deep frustration, and step out of it bravely. Pavel’s escape from the war zone through the cold snow-covered fields is for him a very intense journey, partly because of his psyche, and a moment of understanding of the real world where ideology and function are corroded and the individual is confronted with what is strange. Something familiar but frightening as it has always been deeply repressed.

Alexei, Pavel’s ideological opposite, represents the 'ego' confronted with an excessive reality. His breakdown is not only due to losing sanity, but, surprisingly, to the clarity he has possessed in the past / due to his initial illusion of sanity - because his breakdown is rooted in the devastating realization that neither moral argument nor protest can confront the reality of war and the systemic destruction it brings. His psyche collapses because he was a sane man who came to an insane order and involuntarily confronted forces that were stronger than him and saw too much at once, which drove him mad. His act of

violence is a loss of control over his behavior; at that point his inner contradiction becomes unbearable and his morals cannot hold him back. He loses his mind and acts on a whim because he has stopped trying to look for something, to find the essence of things, when he is sent off to war and is filled with a deep fear of death because of this deeply insulting and immensely cynical sentence.

For Pavel, witnessing this collapse is the first moment of conscious realization that he is in real danger and is going against his true convictions around which he has circled, but never felt he was strong enough to live by. The war does not destroy his beliefs in an instant, but slowly reveals that his identity with his beliefs, his masculinity, his obedience were never what he truly believed in, and, moreover, were imposed on him. Rather, they were built on the absence of his father, the system that replaced him, and the false but also very tempting notion that obedience equals stability. In this sense, desertion for Pavel becomes a chance to get not only out of war, but out of the psychic structure that made his conscription initially inevitable, as well as out of war itself.

The Deserter is a cinematic analysis of the need for subjugation, because it asks questions about why we submit, subordinate, conform, and what we lose when we don’t, and whether it is possible to come back from that loss. The picture of the movie is very sparse and the pace of the movie is slow, but not because of a minimalist approach or aestheticism, but because there are 'rhythms' of accepting something about yourself. Pavel makes the most important changes not during the explosions and experiencing the immense fear for his life in the trenches, but during silences between battles, when he has the time to digest terror and burn what he comes to realize he internally rejects and does not really need. He understands things he could not realize before, especially in the deep remnants of this fear and moments before making key decisions.

This movie is also about liberation, not only political because politics is run by people and reflects human desires, but also about psychological problems, which suggests that desertion can be the core of discovering one's true self and finding what really makes one respect oneself and, therefore, respect others, as someone who is capable of experiencing extremely negative emotions, like grief, choice and doubt. The Deserter works with the idea that an act of courage is walking away from a situation where one is gaslit to believe that blind combat is valor.

The Deserter is a deeply compassionate film, it is a portrait of a young man understanding and moving away from his cognitive distortions and the mythology of war from the inside. The Deserter resembles films such as Come and See, Beautiful Work and Paths of Glory, which also explore themes of obedience, masculinity, state violence and the real human cost of ideology and war.

CHARACTER SET-UP:

Pavel (20)

Pavel is a reserved and a physically strong young man from a small Russian town. He works as a bartender to support his ill mother. Abandoned by his father at a young age, Pavel internalized a deep need for structure and strength and internally projects these qualities onto government, military, and tradition. He sometimes expresses nationalistic and xenophobic beliefs, clinging to them as a shield against internal pain. His desire to go to war is not fueled by hate, as he might even think about himself, but by a subconscious yearning for power and paternal approval. His development is about disillusionment, awakening, and confrontation with the deepest wound one has.

Alexei (20)

Alexei, also from the same town, is Pavel’s closest friend. Slightly weaker, but more expressive in terms of thought, Alexei comes from a liberal family and has the ability to live more comfortably. His parents are educated and politically critical of the regime. Alexei is outspoken against the war and seeks to avoid the draft. His struggle is not just physical, but moral — he wants to maintain his humanity. His arc explores how idealism and beliefs can break under real terror.

Vasiliy (Mid-40s)

A quiet soldier with a hollow gaze and a cynicism of a survivor. Vasiliy becomes the mentor for Pavel. He doesn’t offer a lot of advice, except for his experience. Vasiliy has seen too much in Chechnya, and though he still follows orders, has stopped believing in anything very long ago. He is the “ghost" of Pavel’s future if he stays on the path of conformism.

Alexei’s Parents

Middle-class people, who try to protect their son from the state. Their subplot reflects the meaningless of privilege against state violence.

STORY:

In a provincial Russian town during the cold winter of 2022, best friends Pavel and Alexei, both 20, live on the edge of the war in Ukraine. Pavel is quiet and physically strong and works at a bar to support his ill mother, who is too proud to overtly complain about her worsening condition. In many regards Pavel is hardened and hollow — drawn to structure, discipline, and a warped sense of patriotic duty.

Alexei is his opposite: sensitive, bright, and politically outspoken. Raised in a liberal household, he sees the war as criminal and the draft as state violence. His parents, especially his father, try to keep him from being taken, even suggesting plans to flee Russia.

One night, at a friend’s house party, Pavel says almost nothing. He has already signed a contract with the military, and the party is a quiet farewell, though no one speaks of it out loud. That same week, Alexei receives his draft notice. He is furious, cornered, and, therefore, terrified. His world as well as his trust in any future collapses.

Despite their ideological divide, Pavel and Alexei are peaceful with each other, and, when are drafted into the same unit, become closer. As they sit on the bus to Ukraine, they don’t talk, not knowing they’ve already started their descent into a world completely devoid of reason. The training is brutal and dehumanizing. Vasiliy, a weary mid-40s sergeant, who is sort of ghostlike, becomes a mentor for the two young men. He doesn't preach, but he sees through Pavel's shell and Alexei’s crumbling resolve. He knows what war does to people, and, especially, to boys.

In Ukraine, things happen very quickly, winter changes to early spring, and the snow turns into mud. Their first battle is incredibly chaotic, with smoke, screaming and blood. Alexei panics under fire, and Pavel sees this, and it shatters him. He cannot eat or sleep very well. There’s no return ticket, or victory, it is just survival.

At the midpoint, Pavel learns that their unit is being sent to a “hot zone” with near- suicidal odds. Something inside him deeply breaks. The next day, when ordered to burn a village suspected of resistance, Pavel deep down refuses. What he thought would be his proving ground is a nightmare. He tells Vasiliy he wants to get out. Vasiliy doesn’t judge and just tells him where the fields are least patrolled at night. That evening, in silence, Pavel sees Alexei for the last time. He just looks at him, haunted and ashamed, and leaves.

Under cover of darkness, Pavel deserts. The forest is endless. He is very cautious since every crack of a twig seems like a bullet, and each shape in the dark he confuses with a soldier. He doesn’t have food, or direction, except for a small and not precise map Vasiliy drew for him. For days, he runs and sleeps in ditches. His body gives out, because fever and hunger take him. In a fever dream, he sees his father, which at first seems intimidating, but he comes to realize it is just his idea of the father and a ‘projection’. Later, by accident he finds a monastery in the field. There he sees a figure, which he thinks God is, dressed in a Russian officer’s uniform. There he understands that his relationships with his father directly resembled his relationship with God and authority, and that it was the deepest absence that shaped his entire life. He silently begs. Pavel collapses near a Red Cross outpost.