{"id":10740,"date":"2019-08-01T21:28:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T03:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10740"},"modified":"2019-08-02T12:14:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T18:14:27","slug":"talking-to-the-god-of-tanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10740","title":{"rendered":"Talking to the God of Tanks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The mysterious German “White Tiger” tank charges forth to ambush the protagonists from within a ruined Russian village.<\/p><\/div>\n

Recently I started a post label called “Pagan-ish.”<\/a> Now maybe I should make one called “animist-ish,” having watched the 2012 Russian movie White Tiger<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is Tiger as in Tiger tank<\/a>, not the big cat. This is a World War II movie. If you don’t like war movies, stop. If you are the kind who reacts with “T-34s<\/a> in the mud. Cool!” then keep reading.<\/p>\n

After an engagement with the Germans in which a Red Army armored unit is mostly destroyed, a Russian driver is found in his tank, badly burned but still alive. He makes a miraculous recovery but loses his memory\u2014he remembers his military skills but forgets his name, personal history, and so forth.<\/p>\n

He also talk to tanks. In one scene, he walks along a line of railroad flatcars carrying damaged Red Army tanks to the rear, and each one tells him, somehow, how it was knocked out.<\/p>\n

A seemingly invincible German Tiger tank is wreaking havoc with Russian units, and the mysterious driver is given command of an upgraded T-34 and told to locate and destroy “the White Tiger.” Nayd\u00ebnov, the driver, believes that the Tank God warns him when he is in danger, and he also comes to think that the White Tiger is itself animated, not needing a human crew. Although he eventually engages and damages the White Tiger, it escapes.<\/p>\n

After the German surrender, a Russian officer finds Nayd\u00ebnov still hunting the White Tiger.\u00a0 He tells the tanker that the war over now. To quote Wikipedia,<\/a><\/p>\n

But Nayd\u00eb<\/span>nov disagrees, saying that the war will not truly end until the White Tiger is destroyed. Nayd\u00ebnov believes the White Tiger has gone into hiding and has been recovering from its wounds since their last battle. He claims it will return in several decades unless it is completely destroyed. Nayd\u00ebnov then vanishes along with his tank, seemingly into thin air.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point the movie becomes strange.<\/strong> In our normal linear history, Adolf Hitler is dead by then, but the final scene is a monologue between Hitler and some shadowy figure, sitting in an elegant office, in which the German leader talks about the “eternal struggle,” how all of Europe inwardly wanted Nazi German to attack the USSR, and how war is the normal human state.<\/p>\n

It’s like additional dialog by Julius Evola<\/a>. “The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful” \u2014 that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

Considering that this is a Russian<\/em> movie, it is the kind of twist that makes me wonder sometimes that although Germany lost the physical-plane war against the USSR, if it did not win on some other plane of existence. Eternal struggle . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I started a post label called “Pagan-ish.” Now maybe I should make one called “animist-ish,” having watched the 2012 Russian movie White Tiger. That is Tiger as in Tiger tank, not the big cat. This is a World War II movie. If you don’t like war movies, stop. If you are the kind who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,36,296,53,105,307],"class_list":["post-10740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-germany","tag-movies","tag-pagan-ish","tag-russia","tag-war","tag-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2Ne","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10622,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10622","url_meta":{"origin":10740,"position":0},"title":"Quick Review: “The Pagan King”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 15, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"My \"Pagan-ish\" blog tag seems mostly to go to Latvian materials, and here is another one, The Pagan King. Set in the 13th century, when the Baltic peoples were to be the last Europeans Christianized at sword's point, it is the story of a young man named king of Semigallia,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Medieval Pagan Latvians","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/medieval-latvians.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8498,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8498","url_meta":{"origin":10740,"position":1},"title":"Books and Movies for a Pagan Mindset","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 22, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I have been thinking that I needed to add a new category of reviews \u2014 not just books etc. deliberately focused on Paganism (which to my mind automatically includes polytheism), but those that promote a Pagan mindset without coming out and saying it. Go ahead and say it: Pagan-ish. My\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11613,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11613","url_meta":{"origin":10740,"position":2},"title":"Pagan-ish: “Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the last films made by the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910\u20131998) was Dreams, which he wrote himself, based on his own dreams. It premiered in Cannes in 1990 to \"a polite but muted reception.\" A series of unconnected stories, its themes as \"childhood, spirituality, art, death, universal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8956,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8956","url_meta":{"origin":10740,"position":3},"title":"A Secular Solstice or Truly “Pagan-ish”?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 17, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I saw this sign last Friday at the public library in Pueblo, Colorado, and I liked it for a bunch of reasons. Sometimes I get tired of the \"jolly old elf\" and would not mind seeing a more dignified winter monarch(s). For all its other problems, I thought that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Pagan-ish\"","block_context":{"text":"Pagan-ish","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pagan-ish"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/solstice-king-queen-217x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10304,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10304","url_meta":{"origin":10740,"position":4},"title":"Baltic Gothic: A Quick Review of “November”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In rural 19th-century Estonia, as depicted in the film November, people did not merely put out food offerings for the Dead on All Souls Day \u2014 they fed them. And talked to them. And if the Dead wished to enjoy a sauna, a fire had already been lit. And then\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"death\"","block_context":{"text":"death","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=death"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11594,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11594","url_meta":{"origin":10740,"position":5},"title":"Dior Dresses the Fair Folk","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 12, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This promotional film has me thinking of the special \"Paganism, Art, and Fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate, guest-edited by Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne, and coming very soon Or at least it is the very object correlative of \"Pagan-ish,\" which is how I will label it.","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10740"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10751,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10740\/revisions\/10751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}