I was thinking that maybe the showing of the children's genitals through the cannon is a sign of the power of sexuality and the fear in it. Even maybe the cannon is a phallic symbol, but if anyone could explain how that fit into the movie, that would be great. And if I need to be told that I'm way off, that's great, too.
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I was thinking that the director was showing the boys were circumcised (Jewish) and that the cannons rolling through the village represent the anti-Semitism of the communist regime.
share"Anti-Semitism of the communist regime"? Lenin disagrees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj7iRwzX-A0
The Bolsheviks were not anti-Semitic. In fact many of them were Jews. The Bolshevik government fought anti-Semitism harder than any other government of the time. In the Russian civil war, the Bolsheviks executed men on their own side if they were caught attacking Jews.
EDIT:
Original video was deleted by Youtube, so I replaced the old link with a new one containing Lenin's same speech.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1HPdt-_aRk
I thought it was more a juxtaposition of the innocence and pre-sexuality of the children vs. the horror of war.
shareI too thought it had to do with circumcision as a representation of their Judaism set against the canons representing the coming horrors of the Holocaust.
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