A shameful bowdlerization

Rating: Null/10 (8 November 2011)

One is allowed some artistic license when making historical fiction, but this movie took an exciting true story and pressed it into the standard mold not just of Hollywood, but of social norms. Very often it chooses to make up a story rather than present the usually more interesting and exciting true account. Worse, it removed from the characters all those traits which didn't fit the version of history the writer wanted to tell.
Let's start with the star, Zaitsev. He's portrayed as an uneducated solider with simple ways who learned to shoot as a boy. This allows him to be a moral contrast with the cynical and educated Commisar Danilov. This is the relationship the writer wanted, the common man does good versus the cynical politico.
In fact, Zaitsev was an navy clerk before the war and a Sergent Major. He would have known how to read and write and would not have been shoved forward without a rifle in a suicide attack.
Tania Chernova's character (Rachel Weisz) is the most bowdlerized. While Chernova was Zaitsev's student and lover, she was also a sniper of great skill with an incredible will to survive. She had a burning anger against the Germans and referred to her targets as "sticks" which she would "break". Her stories are interesting and daring as Zaitsev's own. Her introduction to Stalingrad is both true and as exciting as the one the movie makes up for Zaitsev. It is a great tragedy that she is reduced to nothing but a love interest of Zaitsev's.
Stripping down Chernova's real character makes room for the largely made up Commisar Danilov. It allows Zaitsev, Chernova and Danilov to fit the conventional roles of "male hero", "female lover" and "male anti-hero".
It is sad to see Hollywood take exciting, true history featuring strong male and female characters and change it into a comfortable lie. A lie about the goodly male hero who takes power from his innocence, his female lover, and their friend who is cynical and troubled because of his over-education and ambition. The standard Hollywood tropes: ignorance is strength, women are weak, too much education makes you go bad.
For a much better account of the Battle of Stalingrad, please instead read William Craig's "Enemy Of The Gates" from which this movie takes it's title but from which it takes very little history.