Mixed feelings about the film

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2001)

Overall, I like it. About time credit is given the tenacity and sacrifices of the USSR for defeating Fascism. Production is good: sets, costumes, FX, soundtrack. For the most part, combat carnage is presented with historical, visceral authenticity. But characterizations hurt this character-driven film.
British accents are distracting to the American audience which hears them as "exotic" (similarly if Russians had been played by Americans with Brooklyn or Dixie accents). This is probably less distracting for the European audience. I would prefer subtitles. The letter-writing scene with spelled-out -- in English! -- vocabulary was particularly jarring. Likewise, interjection of modern slanguage ("Whatever." "take him out") and use of the term "Krauts" (Russians said "Fritzes"). But the problem lies less with language or accents, than with how the characters relate to eachother. They don't interact in any way remotely Russian. They don't communicate like Russians. Difficult to put a finger on it, exactly, but obvious to one who has spoken with many veterans, and read hundreds of wartime journals and post-war memoirs (even translated to English).
Then there's the romance. There actually was a relationship between Zaitsev and Chernova, his sniper protege and eventually lover. She was not the shy intellectual, though, but a hardened Partisan obsessed with killing Germans. The fully-clothed sex scene in the tunnel/bunker is realistic, if one discounts Weisz's over-emoted multiple orgasms. The brevity and griminess are certainly realistic. Reviewers complain about the surrounding soldiers slumbering through, but combatants were chronically sleep-deprived and fatigued, to the point where they could drop-off standing, despite the constant barrage of shelling. Handled well, "Enemy's" romance might have succeeded. Instead it brings to the film the most nauseatingly insipid dialogue since the blitherings of Jack and Rose in "Titanic". The love-triangle is plain boring.
Sasha: "Enemy's" adorable kid was actually a 15-year-old, German-speaking master-cobbler. At least he is accurately portrayed as a "double-agent" and his fate true to life.
I would have preferred enactment of the overall Battle: street-to-street, house-to-house, constant advancement and retreat, desperate defenses of tenuous territory. Even so, the sniper duel as microcosm does give the film focus, not a bad thing. There is doubt about the actual occurrance of the legendary hunt, but that's ok, too. Soviet propaganda extolled the feats of many heroic role-models like Zaitsev. (Another was Lilya Litvyak, a Jewish female ACE fighter-pilot. Prominently featured in front-line newspapers, her fame attracted the Luftwaffe's attention. Litvyak had her own legendary duel, defeating ACE Graf von Einsiedel in aerial combat. Her lionizing by the Red Army press led to her demise: she was ultimately shot down by eight Messerschmitts drawn to her distinctively painted Yak. Since feats of Soviet heroes were always embellished by the propaganda-mill, the question of Zaitsev's duel's authenticity is moot.
My biggest gripe with "Enemy" is the propagandic agenda. Not Danilov's -- the filmmakers! The producers go overboard to prove they are not in any way "commie sympathizers". There is way too much anti-communist baggage in this film! Yes, the Stalinist regime was evil, and the ruthless NKVD and blocking troops, and true, the Soviet command unadverse to throwing poorly-trained, poorly-armed human waves as cannon-fodder at the enemy. But too much focus is placed on these cruelties of the Soviet system for the average western audience to empathize with the protagonists. History buffs, Eastern Front enthusiasts and Russophiles will get past the anti-Red rhetoric. But too many westerners will continue to misunderstand the fervor of the Soviet people to defend and die for their Motherland. In Russia today, the Great Patriotic War is still everpresent, with monuments everywhere to the fallen millions. It is traditional for newlyweds to visit them and donate their wedding flowers before departing on honeymoon. In its zeal for "political-correctness", the film does a disservice to the Soviet *people*, the true heroes of the Eastern Front.