Rattenkrieg: See It!

Rating: 9/10 (21 March 2001)

There are, in fact, ample historical accounts of the actual existence of Vassili Zaitsev, Heinz Thorvald (Ed Harris' Major Koenig in this film) and a female sniper companion to Zaitsev, Tania Chernova, notwithstanding a previous reviewer's criticism. See Beevor, Chuikov, Werth, there are others, including an account from Zaitsev himself ("Za Volgoi zemli dlia nas ne bylo": translated, 'For us, there was no land beyond the Volga'). As for "Enemy At the Gates", this is a smashing film (pardon the adjective). Substantially accurate, it not only tells the story of the individual contributions of reluctant heroes, but also more broadly depicts an epic battle that concluded by demonstrating to the world that the German Wehrmacht was not invincible, that the Red Army and its civilians not only had absorbed Hitler's best punch but countered it with one of their own, culminating in Generalfeldmarshall Friedrich von Paulus' surrender of the German Sixth Army and, two years later, the defeat of the Third Reich itself.
The setting for this film takes place during a time when the German Wehrmacht had suffered no significant defeats whatsoever. When von Paulus surrendered his Sixth Army at the end of January, 1943, the price of victory for the Russians, after five months of what the Germans referred to as der kessel, the cauldron, was 750,000 killed. For the Germans? Four hundred thousand killed not including another 300,000 of their allies, the Italians, Hungarians and Rumanians. The civilian population of Stalingrad was reduced from a prewar half million men, women and children to 1500 civilians.
The shift of pace and mood between the train ride to the disembarkation site on the east side of the Volga and, following that, the panic of replacements being ferried across the Volga to the charred remains of the city, is comparable to the scenes of the LSTs approaching and landing on Omaha Beach in "Saving Private Ryan". The haplessness of new recruits being cast into the fray, only half of them with rifles, to die either by being cut to pieces by the Germans or, if they fled, cut to pieces by Red Army troops in the rear positions at the direction of the political commissars, sets the mood of dispair and terror difficult to imagine without the sophistication of modern film making. In this sense, special effects are used very effectively to enhance and drive home the chaos and continuous terror of urban warfare.
Naturally, the principle point of interest is the "High Noon" contest between Major Koenig (Ed Harris) and Zaitsev (Jude Law) and their dance to terminate one another. This tension, broken only by the love affair between Zaitsev and Tania (Rachel Weisz), should keep anyone who isn't insensate gripped by the developing events leading to Zaitsev's ultimate triumph-that delivered, ultimately, by his "promoter" and rival for Tania's affections, Danilov.
Minor beef: The unaccented English throughout was welcome-though, the dialog coaches needed to decide if "Vassily" was "VA-ssily or Va-SSI-ly-First or second syllable stress: "Shto Eta?" (Russian pronunciation favors second stress)
The German foot soldiers, by the way, privately responded to Hitler's "Fortress Stalingrad" designation of the Sixth Army's encirclement at Stalingrad with a label of their own: "Rattenkrieg"-"War of the Rats"-a more fitting picture of their lice infested, starving existences . The Russians, of course, faired no better.
I enjoyed this film very much, though it is violent and disturbing. It offers those of us who lived close to those WWII years a poignant reminder that it was a time never so good to us as the times we live in now. And a wakeup call for the rest of us who think that our comfortable lives are forever a normal feature of a peaceful existence.