100 BEST WAR MOVIES #84 - Enemy at the Gates (2001)

 

           “Enemy at the Gates” grew from the tiny seed of a few pages in the eponymously entitled non-fiction book by William Craig about the Battle of Stalingrad.  Director Jean-Jacques Annaud took that seed involving a sniper’s duel in the rubble of the City of Stalin and grew a movie out of it.  The movie was to be Europe’s answer to “Saving Private Ryan”.  It was, at the time, the most expensive non-American movie ever made.

            The story opens with Vassili Zaitzev (Jude Law) learning how to hunt from his grandfather.  Hunting wolves is a lot like sniping, so this teaching will serve him well.  Years later, with war raging in Russia, Vassili is shipped with other cannon fodder to Stalingrad.  The film’s equivalent to the opening of SPR has the new recruits crossing the Volga under attack by Stukas and then having to make a suicidal frontal attack on an entrenched German position.    The crossing could be described as “the fog of arrival” as the Stuka attack generates chaos, confusion, and fear.  The CGI is okay and the wounds are graphic.  Very similar to when the ramp goes down in the Higgins boat in SPR.  Upon reaching shore every other soldier is handed a rifle.  “The one with the rifle shoots, the one without the rifle follows him.  When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots.”  The cinematography for the charge puts the audience in the middle.  There is hand-held and slo-mo.  Blood splatters on the camera lens.  Very intense with non-ridiculous deaths.

            Vassili meets his soon to be BFF when Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) takes refuge in the corpse-strewn fountain Vassili is playing dead in.  5 bullets + 5 targets =  a hero is born.  The transition from the mass charge to individual action is cool.  Danilov becomes Vassili’s press agent after he convinces the newly arrived Khruschev (Bo Hopkins) that all the Soviets need is a hero.  Vassili is reluctant about becoming a celebrity, but boy is he damn good at sniping (as a montage of articles about his kills shows). 

            A romantic subplot kicks in as the duo are introduced to the comely Tania (Rachel Weisz) who wants to kill Germans to avenge her Jewish parents.  That’s one triangle.  The other evolves upon the arrival of the Great Nazi Hope.  Col. Konig (Ed Harris) has been sent from his sniper school to shut down this Soviet morale-booster.  He is aristocratic, cocky, and very cunning – in other words, a Hollywood Nazi.  The third leg of the triangle is the twelve year old Sasha who imagines himself a double agent.  It’s an extremely small world in Stalingrad.  He shines Konig’s boots and for chocolate is willing to sell out his idol Vassili or is he?  Thus begins the cat and mouse.

            Konig is arguably a better sniper than Vassili.  This being a movie, Vassili has to be the underdog.  He becomes the stalkee and has several well-staged close-calls.  The scenes are your basic “this might have happened to some human at one time on planet Earth”, but surely not to the same person.  Except in a movie.  Still, the scenarios are entertaining.  The death of Vassili’s comrade Kulikov (Ron Perlman) is particularly awesome.  That Nazi dude is good.

            Meanwhile, romance blooms in the rubble.  Tania becomes a sniper and Vassili teaches her more than how to shoot a gun.  We get the most erotic, nonnudity, sleeping bag tryst in war movie history.  Unfortunately for the BFFs, Danilov has taken a shine to Tania (she being the only beautiful Soviet woman in Stalingrad and possibly the whole country), so we have a love triangle.  Also a Vinn diagram with Vasily the connection between Konig/Sasha and Danilov/Tania.  War will simplify this arrangement.

 

ACTING:                            B

ACTION:                            A  7/10

ACCURACY:                    C

PLOT:                                A

REALISM:                        C

CINEMATOGRAPHY:   A

SCORE:                             A

BEST SCENE:  when Konig has Zaitsev cornered in the factory

BEST QUOTE:  Khrushchev:  You won't give up the river bank. I don't care if you lost half your men. Lose the other half. Lose yourself.

 

            Let’s address the accuracy issue first.  The movie has a legion of detractors.  When it was released, Red Army veterans of WWII demanded that it be banned.  It was also not well-received in Germany. Hey, if you are offending both sides, you must have gotten it right.  The scene where Russian soldiers are forced to make a frontal attack with only half having guns is not realistic.  This might have happened in a penal battalion, but not regular units.  And athough soldiers were shot for cowardice, an entire unit would not be machine guns while retreating.  Historians have come down hard on the duel.  Craig apparently swallowed Soviet hero-creation propaganda hook, line, and sinker.  Anthony Beevors in his book Stalingrad debunked the whole Zaitsev versus Konig (sometimes identified as Thorwald).  There was a Vassili Zaitsev and he did fight at Stalingrad and did score a huge number of kills.  However, the duel with a top notch German sniper was exaggerated at the least by Soviet propagandists (abetted by Zaitsev).  Zaitsev even provided Konig’s rifle scope for a Russian museum.  By the way, the final confrontation was (of course) a lot more mundane than the movie version.  Zaitsev and Konig/Thorwald eyed each other’s potential lairs for days before Kulikov poked up his helmet and then feigned death to get the Nazi to reveal his position for a kill shot by Vassili.  The screenplay can be condoned if you view it as a legendary take on Stalingrad.  And it’s a sniper film.  We don’t hold those to high standards.  In my opinion, it is the most entertaining movie in the subgenre.

            The most amazing thing about the characters is that there actually was a Tania and even a Sasha.  Before I researched the movie, I would have bet anything that those two were screenwriters inventions.  Tania was an American-born Russian who returned to the homeland to be with her grandparents after the invasion.  When they were killed she became a vengeance-minded partisan and ended up in Stalingrad.  She apparently hooked up with Zaitzev although there is debate on whether the hook up got to the sleeping bag stage.  Officially, it did.  She was wounded during the latter stages of the battle, as was Vassili later.  Both thought the other dead, so the Soviet government was not able to stage a royal wedding.  Sasha was basically as depicted sans the relationship with Konig.  His death was by hanging for espionage.

            My loyal followers know that I put a high premium on historical accuracy, especially when the inaccuracies make a mockery of history (as in “Braveheart”, for example).  “Enemy at the Gates” does little harm to history (other than the laughable poster line “A single bullet can change history”).  Craig might have been suckered, but the movie is obviously not a propaganda piece.  The Zaitzev seed may have been fertilized with a ton of Soviet manure, but it makes for good entertainment for war movie lovers and more importantly for civilians (especially women).  Plus, like with most fact-based war movies, it can lead to fascinating fact-checking.

            “Enemy at the Gates” is a fine example of a modern war movie.  It does retain some of the elements and cliches of old school movies, but adds modern pizazz and technology.  The movie is surprisingly unpredictable to go along with its predictability.  The action scenes are kinetic and the suspense is palpable.  The acting is good, especially Hopkins (he chews the scenery – just like Khrushchev did) and Harris.  Weisz is not particularly good (and her hair does not act at all), but her character is a very rare strong female character in a war movie.  Appreciate that.

              The cinematography is excellent as are the sets.  A lot of money went into rubble.  A derelict factory was used for the factory scenes.  And Stalingrad’s Red Square was recreated.  It took five months.  The effort that went into the movie was massive.   The musical score is memorable and repeats a strong motif for impending suspense.  The sound effects are also top notch.  The theme of a manufactured hero is reminiscent of “Flags of Our Fathers”.  The other theme of conflicting cultures is a bit simplistic with the aristocratic, stoical German versus the proletarian, emotional Russian representing their countries, but not unbelievable.

             I know my inclusion of "Enemy at the Gates" will rub some people the wrong way.  I understand the concerns about its accuracy.  But if you view it as a tale that has been blown up from a small part of the Battle of Stalingrad, I think it is acceptable as entertainment.  It may get some facts wrong, but most of the characters were real people and I commend the screenwriters for weaving them into a compelling narrative.  It may be a guilty pleasure for me, but I have seen the movie numerous times and I believe it holds up as one of the best war movies.