thoughts about the plot

I watched the film for the first time last night and thought it was truly a great film but the trailer and the first half of the film had given me quite a different impression of how it would progress.

I thought the film would continue with Florya and Glasha as they tried to outrun the Nazi's, survive, cope with the atrocities and even escape from a few themselves. Instead, this stopped half way through when he left Glasha and the film then continued on a more linear, piece by piece, storyline that essentially plays out in real time once he's taken in by the old farmer.

Was anyone else here disappointed that they dropped the story line with Glasha? I thought she was good with Florya and would allow the film to have a character development of not only Florya (which we got) but also Glasha and the Flora-Glasha relationship as well.

I can see why the director went with the storyline he did as the psychological aspects of the film is probably quite key to what he was trying to convey but in terms of re-watchability (is that a new word haha?), the film would have been better if it had more of a dual character story line. Don't get me wrong, I love the film and will watch it again tonight, but I don't think I could watch it again for some time after that as when he leaves Glasha the film takes on quite a straight forward storyline where there are just a bunch of small events one after the other before the barn at the end.

The image of when he looks out of the barn as it pans across all the Germans wont leave me for some time...