Nevertheless, he’s so well-armed with ambition, sweep, visual flair and superb acting that he manages to obliterate all resistance, despite the lack of careful concentration.
Perhaps it takes a sprawling, unwieldy movie to tell the story of the sprawling, unwieldy, epic, incomparably deadly (some two million corpses) Battle of Stalingrad in World War II. The old-fashioned Hollywood means for dramatizing such an unimaginable conflict would be to create a dozen compelling characters at various corners of the battlefield (remember the portrayal of the Normandy invasion in The Longest Day?) Annaud has chosen instead to focus on a single individual, and the other figures in this fine cast all revolve around him.
Fortunately, Jude Law (who won a richly deserved supporting actor Oscar nomination as a spoiled, decadent rich kid in The Talented Mr. Ripley) plays this pure-hearted, country boy hero with riveting but effortless charisma. Based on an uncannily accurate marksman who became a celebrated figure of Soviet propaganda, this shepherd from the Urals arrives in Stalingrad with tens of thousands of other raw recruits to try to stop the Nazi advance into the Russian heartland. The grandly cinematic opening sequence of the film becomes too obviously and uncomfortably reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan, as the new arrivals try to cross the Volga River into the shattered city. They face enemy shelling and terrifying strafing by low-flying planes — all recorded with mud-and-blood-spattered hand held cameras, Spielberg style — while their own officers shoot them down if they dare to hesitate or retreat.
After both audience and hero somehow manage to survive this initial assault, the story gets down to business as an idealistic, cold-blooded Marxist political officer (with long thin face and wire-rim spectacles, natch) discovers the kid’s nearly supernatural skill with a rifle. Realizing that the beleaguered Red Army and the suffering populace need inspirational tales, this clever Commie (played by Joseph Fiennes of Shakespeare In Love) plays the role of Colonel Parker to Jude Law’s Elvis. He quickly exaggerates and publicizes the exploits of the handsome young sharpshooter in propaganda leaflets and press releases (“Vasily Zaitsev Guns Down His 58th German Officer!”) and rallies the spirits of the entire nation. The gunman’s publicist also advances his own career, under the approving eye of the tough-as-nails party boss who’s arrived in Stalingrad to take command. Baby Boomers old enough to remember the late '50s will instantly recognize that foul-mouthed, bullying apparatchik as Nikita Kruschev, played by the appropriately earthy Bob Hoskins under a stunningly persuasive make-up job. (Hoskins performed a similarly miraculous transformation to play another Commie tough guy, Lavrenty Beria, in the little-seen but superb Inner Circle — which deserves rental.)
The weakness in the overall scheme involves a lame love triangle between the ambitious political officer, his sniper protégé, and a dewy-eyed Communist warrior babe inevitably named (gag me with a hammer-and-sickle!) Tanya. Rachel Weisz (the love interest in The Mummy) gives this stock figure more vitality that she deserves, and one love scene just before a crucial confrontation, as the two leads manage to connect among a tangle of sweaty, filthy, sleeping soldiers, proves simultaneously sad and sexy.
All of the performances deserve admiration — with these best-in-the-business, mostly-British actors hitting their targets with the deadly accuracy of the marksmen in the story.
Traditional Hollywood war movies of course focused on good guys and bad guys, before the Vietnam experience led filmmakers to try to inject moral ambiguity into everything. Saving Private Ryan represented a triumphant return to the old approach — how, after all, can you show any doubt that the American crusade against the Nazis amounted to anything less than an ultimate conflict of good vs. evil? In a fascinating strategic move, Jean Jaques Annaud brings us back to the world of moral ambiguity — since the Nazis and Communists who struggled so fiercely, so decisively at Stalingrad could be classified at comparable levels of totalitarian viciousness. To his eternal credit, the Frenchman doesn’t allow his sympathy for his Russian actors (who all speak inexplicably with British accents) to cause him to prettify their cause. Among all the movie’s terrifying images, a huge, smiling iconic image of the man Kruschev calls “the boss” represents the scariest visual cue of them all — at least for anyone who knows the real background of Stalin and Stalinism. Watching this battle unfold with blood-and-guts realism, it’s hard not to remember Henry Kissinger’s famous comment about the Iran-Iraq war: “It’s only a shame that both sides can’t lose.” In this context, a jolly little coda in the film’s final five minutes, seemingly celebrating the grand Soviet victory and too conveniently dispensing with the war-crossed lovers, undermines the sober, compelling tone of what’s gone before.
(e3mil columnist Michael Medved hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show that focuses on the intersection of pop culture and politics. You can contact him at www.michaelmedved.com.)
Michael and Brent Bozell speak out against media bias in today's Media & Culture channel.
In any event, those diabolical Nazis aren’t about to let one fresh-faced, rustic Russkie sharpshooter undermine their whole invasion, so they import the best shot in the German army all the way from Berlin to try to pick him off. You know this guy is good because he’s played by Ed Harris at his intensely smoldering, steely-eyed best. His Major Konig, the head of the Wehrmacht sniper school, exudes understated professionalism and world-weary confidence so effectively that he becomes almost admirable — and you can believe his utterly amazing feats of marksmanship.
At this point, Enemy at the Gates settles into familiar patterns of an old-fashioned gun-fighter movie, with bizarre twists and settings. The Russian and German star snipers consciously concentrate on one another — trying to gain advantage by crawling through drain pipes or hiding in ruined buildings while pursuing their rivals in a deadly, ingenious, brilliantly staged game. Since the middle section of the movie features a consistent emphasis on waiting, hiding, and trying to outthink the other guy, the pace of the movie slows to a crawl, but the tension remains so palpable and the duel emerges with such fascinating detail that viewers will want to emulate the patience of the protagonist.
Jean Jaques Annaud remains one of the most outrageously ambitious, visually gifted of all contemporary filmmakers. Quest For Fire, The Name of the Rose, Seven Years in Tibet, all took audiences on unforgettable journeys to exotic lost worlds – and all suffered from directorial indulgence and slow-pacing. Among Annaud's previous work, only The Bear (a great movie by any measure that everyone who cares about film should see) proved totally satisfying – in part because its stars all proved to be animals, so dialogue never distracted from the unforgettable visual story-telling. At its best, Enemy at the Gates tilts in the same direction – long, carefully constructed stretches without annoying chatter as the two antagonists try to take aim at one another, recalling the skill of expert silent film makers. Unfortunately, even when conversation fails to distract, the overwrought film score does. The insufferably pretentious James (Ludwig von) Horner is at his intrusive worst here – consciously and annoyingly echoing the Prokofiev of Alexander Nevsky and the John Williams of Schindler's List — in fact, Williams ought to step forward and complain of this shabby, outright larceny. It's hard to remember another worthy and mostly wonderful movie that's been so badly served by a tacky, ham-handed, schmaltz-laden musical score.
THREE AND A HALF STARS. Rated R, of course, for suitably horrifying battlefield violence, crude language, and one oddly subtle but surprisingly specific sex scene. The running time is two hours and 13 minutes, but it feels even longer.
