Very realistic from the human point of view

Rating: 8/10 (23 August 2001)

I watched this movie on dvd a few days ago and, in spite of its many flaws, I am still wondering about it. The plot is very confusing and I agree with another reviewer that it might work better if it would be just another unnamed city rather than Stalingrad.
I believe that the opening scene is almost irrelevant to the rest of the movie and, historically, is misleading (so to speak) as well as the entire ``political'' foundation of the movie. Indeed, the opening scene makes an impression that all the Russian soldiers went to the war just because they were forced by komissars (or whoever), who shot them in the back forcing them to go forward. It is obviously not correct - most of them just protected their homes and families in this extermination war, where more then 20,000,000 (13, 600, 000 military) of the Russians fell (compared to more that 7,000, 000 of Germans (3,250,000 military), 295,000 of the US loss (including in the Pacific) and 388,000 of the UK death toll). This is actually confirmed by the main part of the movie where obviously nobody forces Russians to fight as they did during these very long months.
Of course, I was not there, but I understand that if the company officers start shooting their soldiers in the back in the front lines, they will be shot by them ``incidentally'' very quickly too. So, this part of the movie is wrong to me. However, it is a historical fact that there were indeed security/interior troops staged relatively away in safety from the front lines, who did all the catching and shooting of those troops who were retreating to Stalingrad during the preceding months, following this stupid Stalin's directive forbidding it. I believe that this stupidity and incompetence led to the loss of so many lives, when Stalin did not allow the troops and civilians to leave desperate and useless positions/cities or wanted to take a certain city on a certain holiday date, forcing his generals to comply with him.
Another ``historical'' mistake was, I think, showing that political officers (like Hoskins) played the most essential role in the defence of Stalingrad. It was done by regular militaries too, who eventually made the komissars look as they were the redundant there. In the final victory the general Zhukov played the main role (as he did in all major victories in the WWII on the Eastern front: Moscow 1941, Stalingrad 1942, Kursk 1943, and took Berlin in 1945). I think the pivotal role of Stalingrad for the Russians was also exactly that Stalin and his likes finally understood (or more precisely were forced to undertand and back-off for a while} that the military professionals should be in charge if somebody wants to win.
Having this in mind, and accordingly ignoring the opening scene I enjoyed the movie very much. I think it is one of the most realistic war movies I ever saw, where people are people and are not heroes (like Segal and his likes), and every one can die next in this terrible mess. So, I applaud the authors of the movie who show how normal people could find strength to remain be people in Stalingrad. As a suspense, the duel of snipers was very realistic and interesting to me, without this ``heroic'' cloud. The love triangle seems very proper to illustrate this ``antiheroic'' war reality, where people did not expect to survive but still wanted to have hope and remain to be human.