I don't get why Sergei (the Colonel) was marked for elimination.
I guess during the "Purges" almost anyone could end up marked (that's why they are notorious for being so crazy), and maybe that answers my question.
But it seems like his caliber as a big popular hero would have protected him.
We can safely suppose he hadn't really spied for Germany and Japan?...
Anyone have any thoughts about that?
A status of a hero did not protect him against stalin's purges... In fact, more popular a person became... Bigger the threat he was assumed to be...
The spying... Nothing more than fabricated evidence!
They never found the second dose!
Pretty much this. Also in this specific instance, it seemed strongly implied that Dmitri framed the case against him for personal reasons--and I would imagine a lot of purges involved personal backstabbing by people who could manipulate advantage in the political system.
I did also wonder if his interference in the tank exercises at the beginning had something to do with it. One of the men in the car commented how Nadya was so "bold" for a little child--and the other said something like, "as I said, she's his [Sergei's] daughter". He may have pulled rank in other such instances before, in ways that started rubbing certain politically powerful people the wrong way.
Overall too, he seemed a real classic man of integrity--and such folks can often become targets in a corrupt autocratic system.
Understanding is a three-edged sword.
You put it really well... the tanks had nothing to do with that though, because he was arrested on the evening of that same day... he was marked earlier by Stalin and Beria... and they assigned the case to Dmitri because they needed to test him as well... he hated Kotov, yes!!! but he would be causing distress to the people he once considered a family... and the woman he loved... so it was all done with hidden agenda...
shareThe events of the movie were all in one day? Actually, now that I think of it, I guess they were--Nadya (I think it was) had mentioned that they were supposed to go to the zoo "tomorrow" near the beginning of the movie, and it was mentioned they weren't going tomorrow after all at the end. I guess it just seemed as if the events took place over a few leisurely summer days. Sergei really did make the most of his last day as a free man (I wonder if he knew or suspected that it was, as soon as Dmitri showed up--or did the "sun" orb thing symbolize the moment he did realize it?). I teared up at the last moments he had with his daughter.
Understanding is a three-edged sword.
Till the very end, he thought that Stalin is going to bail him out, blindly believing in the system he helped create... It wasn't till he began to cry in the car that he realized that it was his hero and friend --Stalin -- who ordered his arrest...
The ball lightning was symbolic of the eerie trouble that suddenly came upon the family... burnt by the sun of revolution...
It was one day indeed... A man woke up a national hero and went to bed an enemy of the state. The lost driver who drove around the village is indicative of the fact that it was one day. Unfortunately,
a lot of men suffered his fate during those times.
The revolution took everything away from people like Dmitry and gave everything to people like Kotov... but the tables have turned during Stalin's ruling... Just look at what happened to Leo Trotsky -- a legendary red army commander who was one if the main men of the revolution... read Orwell's Animal Farm to get more perspective...
nice chatting with you
I don't know the director's intentions, but I couldn't help seeing the Kotov character in this very fine movie as a stand-in for the real-life figure of Marshall Mikhail Tukhachevsky - in which case, his status as a popular war hero is the answer to your (OP's) question.
Because Stalin saw his fame and popularity as a threat and/or affront to himself, and NKVD chief Iezhov was able to manipulate his fears to get rid of probably the best Red Army commander; indeed, of most of the best Soviet commanders. IIRC, of the 15 men who held the highest army rank of Marshall, 13, including Tukhachevsky, were executed in the course of Stalin's 1937 purge of the Red Army.
Like the fictitious Kotov (who would surely not have remained just a colonel), Tukhachevsky was the most celebrated Red Army commander during the 1918-1921 Civil War; he was arrested by Iezhov/Stalin and shot (in 1937, not 1936), but "rehabilitated" after Stalin's death; his wife died in the GULag and his young daughter was also imprisoned, but survived.
I was thinking Mitya might actually have been behind the accusations.
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