Enemy at the Gates

When it comes out in German, or Russian, with English subtitles, I may offer a different opinion. However, all I know about the Battle of Stalingrad, which I won't pit against a professional historian, suggests that some of the themes dealt with in this movie, cannot be dealt with in English.

To wit, I include:

1. What it meant to be a Jew in Stalin's Wartime Soviet Union. No matter how beatiful the Jewess, she should be heard in Russian.

2. No matter how evil, no matter how great the actor, a German major top sniper should speak German. I think Ed Harris is among our greatest actors. He does a magnificent job here, even hanging the young Russian boy who has acted as a double agent, appearing to be sympathetic to the German sniper sent to eliminated the great Soviet hero.

3. Stalingrad was more than mud. This movie somehow bypasses the absolute worst period of the Battle of Stalingrad. See the German film of 1992, titled, "Stalingrad." The winter defeated the Germans, not the Russians. This movie bypasses the period from November, 1942 to February, 1943, when General Paulus' Army surrenders. In addition, the position and personager of General Paulus, who committed high treason by surrendering, is given rather short shrift here.

4. This is just NOT a great battle or historical film. The known actors have not invalidated that. It is all just too "easy" (such as the Major "hearing" the snipers approaching a known pathway through pipes in a nearly silent factory, at a time when there could nearly have been no such silence. In addition, the impression is given that German fighters followed the Major as he stalked the heralded Soviet sniper, and to my knowledge, ther is no evidence this happened. Those sequences simply are too "computer graphic."

5. War is a great backdrop for a love story, but Stalingrad was no love story. I refer the reader back to the German film, Stalingrad. Whether historically accurate or not, this simply is too romanticized a version of a Jewish woman falling in love with a Ukranian peasant, spurning her "true" beloved, the Jewish political officer. The ending of the film Stalingrad, in which the surviving "whore" of of the German officers is killed trying to save surviving Germans, is more believable.

6. Convenience. Glass "falling" so that antagonists can see one another in deadly confrontation, went out with "Father Knows Best." It decries the suspension of disbelief needed to be impressed by such a confrontation.

7. So, I suggest, see this film, but understand its weaknesses before you invest precious time. Otherwise, I recommend "Stalingrad" (the German film), which is worth seeing, even if you are multitasking.

8. It is never as simple as, "shoot soldiers to get them to fight" or "give them hope" or "give them a reason" (see Gettysburg, to wit). Here, we're led to believe that Khruschev was easily enticed from one philosophy to another. I doubt it greatly.

Get it? I hope so.

Cheers to my readers....


the long hard war   May 8, 2004
 2 out of 4 found this review helpful

It's amazing how you can see a full-production, serious Hollywood film about World War II and not have it be about pain, nationalism, classism, xenophobia, primitive regression, freedom, social control-you know, the things war is about-but instead have it just be about a guy getting laid, his friend's envy over the fact, and the near (naturally near) loss of his betrothed to circumstances beyond his control. WWII...American high school...is this a disturbing mix up, or is it just me? (I'm not sure of the reasons for the conflation, but I suspect it might be because audiences really don't want a film about complicated issues and that film makers, with deadlines in one pile and bills in another, know this. It's a well oiled war machine, the film industry. But now I conflate!)

Jude Law plays super sniper and Soviet national hero Vassili Zaitsev and is amazing as always. Somehow I can loath a movie with Law in it and still like him and his character. In EATG, Zaitsev's relationships with others unfortunately become purely device driven: it's the stock Romantic Interest / Best Buddy / Arch Nemesis trio. Joseph Fiennes (Best Buddy) is Commisar Danilov, an erratic propaganda writer who becomes Vassili's biographer for the Soviet papers. As you'd half expect ahead of time, Danilov betrays his friend in the final act. But as if his motivations were never worth our time, Danilov then sacrifices his life so that Vassili can win his struggle with stone faced Ed Harris, who plays König (Arch Nemesis), a German Major sent by the furor to snipe the sniper. The subplot of Rachel Weisz as Tania Chernova (Romantic Interest), aside from a surprising, well acted public sex and probable deflowering scene, is so superficially presented it's hardly worth analysis.

I don't know. When I see a war flick like this-one that follows a single individual around-I always feel like I'm watching a movie about the concept of luck, and how interesting a theme can luck really make, even in a war picture? So even though (and because) it's trite to tears, it's fitting that Fiennes' final lines-just before by far the most stylized "shot" of many bullets to the head in this film-argue there're basic flaws in the communist dream: "some will always be lucky...lucky in life, lucky in love." Wow. War really makes you think, doesn't it?

It's impossible for me to give this movie any dramatic weight or credibility after a disappointing scene like that, even considering the (light) treatment of issues of intellectualism and war throughout: the refraining metaphor of the bullet to the brain; the underground library stocked with both Marx and Göethe; ever relevant questions of media, truth, and propaganda. (Most frustrating, the deconstructive fact that the obviously over embellished story is based on Soviet war literature to begin with makes the film makers seem oblivious to their own subject matter.)All this must have felt like representing the heavy tomes of 1940s Eurasian bloodshed over conquest and racism with a tangible moment for script writers Alain Godard and Jean-Jacques Annaud. But when the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie gets cast as little more than a booty call, the effect only seems unintentionally comedic.