Fascinating character study in human nature

I understand that, IN TRANZIT is based on a true story. I don't know how much is actual historical fact and how much is dramatic embellishment, but IN TRANZIT does offer a most fascinating study in human nature set against the backdrop of wartime, the realities of post-war Russia, set in a bitterly cold winter, and the stressful conditions of a prisoner-of-war camp, underscored by the tension of suppressed human sexuality and need between the German POWs, the Russian female guards, and the local female population.

I gather that the human need for affection, physical contact and warmth, and instinctual need for the opposite gender can override the hostility of wartime enemies. I do believe the drama of Russian female guards and townswomen overcoming their hostility for their defeated German enemies, in order to reach out for human sexual need and contact. Post-WWII Europe was left short of available young and mature eligible men by the tens of millions. The same would be true in post-war Japan. Millions of young and mature women were left without men and the opportunity to satisfy their sexual and physical needs. While Russain women might be turning to defeated German men out of dire physical need, the same is going on in Germany, as German women turn to American G.I.s for physical contact and in Japan, Japanese women are quickly warming to the strange, white American yankee G.I. Even in post-war Australia, the Aussie girls are wondering what to do in the absence of sufficient number of available males.

VERA FARMIGA - As the humanistic and compassionate Russian doctor, Natalie,
never fails to move us with her gentleness and compassion and
sincere desire to heal in the truest traditon of the
physician's time-honored occupation. Still, she's a woman in
the prime of her life with unmet physical and sexual needs.
Loyal to her once-proud Russian officer husand, Andrei, who by
now invalided due to head injury is little more than a semi-
autistic, mental 10-year old, is relegated to front-gate guard.
Deprived of the man she once knew, Doctor Natalie is the one
voice of remaining humanity in the prison camp. Later she
discovers by accident an empathic soul in the character of a
female Russian lieutenant that is her superior, who is equally
alone and sexually unfulfilled until she meets a younger Russian
officer.
When Dr. Natalie falls into bed with the German officer POW in
her darkened office/bedroom, the look on her face is one not of
lust or even desire; it's more of palpable relief. You can
almost read her mind that, "...thank god, a desired man is
finally touching me again...feeling like a woman again at last."

JOHN MALKOVICH - This man is unmatched in his ability to play the most venomous
of villains in the best tradition of the James Bond movies.
Malkovich tends to play thuggish villains who possess some
degree of intelligence and cunning. In his diabolitical role
as coldly brutal and suppressed sadist, NKVD colonel Pavlov,
Malkovich demonstrates the pure terror capable of a man with
unchallenged authority and power. Colonel Pavlov in today's
world would go to prison for the unbelievable sexual
harassment crimes he commits with calculating vindictiveness
such as when he compels the gentle and simple young Russian
kitchen cook, Zena, to bare her breasts outside in the
freezing cold in front of terrified German POWs. Malkovich's
brutal Colonel Pavlov is the kind of man I would have greatly
enjoyed shooting several times over with my M16A2 assault
rifle had the Soviet Union and the U.S. ever gone to war
decades ago.
Still I got a real charge out of watching NKVD Colonel
Pavlov's brutal flunky henchman, a short-statured NKVD officer
who goes about slugging German POWs and Soviet citizens that
he deems to have offended or disrespected his master. You
know you've reached the top of the world when you have your
own thuggish personal assistant who's free to go about flailing
on people you don't like.