Possibly the finest World War Two film of recent years

Rating: 9/10 (9 August 2007)

"Enemy at the Gates" is something of a rarity in twenty-first century cinema- a large-scale war film made on this side of the Atlantic. (It is officially described as an Anglo-Irish-German-American co-production). It is, moreover, a war film which deals with the concepts of patriotism, honour and heroism in a straightforward, not a satirical or cynical, manner. The twist is that the hero is not American or British, but Russian.
The film is set during the battle of Stalingrad in 1942/43, and is based upon the story of Vassili Zaitsev, a Russian soldier who distinguished himself as a sniper, killing around 250 enemy combatants. Zaitsev was a real individual, although the film does not always accurately follow the facts of his life. There are two major strands to the plot. One (presumably fictitious) deals with a love-triangle involving Zaitsev, a political commissar named Danilov and a female soldier named Tania. The other deals with a duel between Zaitsev and a top German sniper, Major Koenig. This duels was widely reported as fact in the Soviet media at the time, but modern historians have doubted whether it took place and even whether Koenig actually existed. It may simply have been invented by Soviet propagandists to boost morale at a time when the war was going badly.
In the nineties there was a tendency in Hollywood films to cast British actors as the villains, which caused some adverse comment in the British media. When, therefore, Ed Harris (the only big-name American star in the film) was cast as Koenig, some thought that this was a case of the British getting revenge by having an American play the Nazi villain. (All the main Russian parts went to British actors). Koenig, however, is not the only villain in this film. Certainly, he is cold, cynical and cruel, but the Russian political boss Nikita Khrushchev, sent by Stalin to oversee the defence of the city, can be equally ruthless. Khrushchev, of course, was another real-life character, a leading Communist Party official who was eventually to succeed Stalin as Soviet dictator.
If Koenig and Khrushchev are the villains, and Zaitsev and his sweetheart Tania are the heroes, Danilov is a morally ambiguous figure. At first he seems to possess a humanity and idealism which set him apart from the other Communist political officers who are distinguished only by fanaticism and brutality. It is he who suggests to Khrushchev that they should inspire the men by providing them with real-life examples of heroism. Khrushchev agrees, largely because his own preferred method of shooting any Red Army soldiers, up to and including the rank of General, who show insufficient stomach for the fight, has proved disastrously counterproductive. (The Germans are broadcasting to the Russian soldiers that it is the Communist Party hierarchy, and not they, who are the true enemies of the Russian people, and the behaviour of the NKVD men under Khrushchev's command makes even this outrageous claim seem more credible). Danilov suggests his friend Zaitsev, who has already distinguished himself as a sniper, as a true Russian hero.
Later, however, Danilov seems less sympathetic. The Soviet propaganda machine has built Zaitsev into a near-mythical figure, and when the Germans send Koenig to the front from Berlin with the specific purpose of killing him, Danilov has to stage-manage the duel between them. Propaganda demands that Zaitsev, the working-class peasant lad from the Urals, who learnt to shoot on hunting trips with his grandfather, should take on the arrogant, decadent German aristocrat and beat him at his own game. At times Danilov seems deliberately to be sending Zaitsev into harm's way, and he may have mixed motives for doing so. He needs to engineer this confrontation to avoid falling foul of Khrushchev, but there is also a suggestion that, consciously or unconsciously, he would welcome the death of a man who is loved by the woman he himself loves.
The climax of the film comes with the duel between Koenig and Zaitsev. The two men are very different. Harris's Koenig, considerably the older of the two, is cool, detached and confident; Zaitsev, as played by Jude Law is more nervous, fearful and doubtful of his own abilities. Harris and Law receive excellent support from Bob Hoskins as the Machiavellian, bullying Khrushchev and the lovely Rachel Weisz as Tania.
The sombre nature of the plot is emphasised by an equally sombre look given by low-level lighting and a dull colour scheme dominated by the greys and browns of the ruined buildings and the grey-green and khaki of the uniforms. The only vivid colour we see is red- the red of blood, of flames, of the officers' collar flashes and of the Nazi and Soviet flags. Other bright colours are almost totally absent.
This film may have been influenced by Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" made three years earlier. Although the battle scenes do not perhaps have quite the same brutal power as those in the earlier film, they are nevertheless very well done. (Particularly memorable was the early one in which Russian soldiers crossing the Volga are strafed by German aircraft; those who stay put are killed by the enemy and those who try to escape are shot as cowards by their own officers). In fact, I rate this film higher than "Saving Private Ryan" and considerably higher than another big American wartime epic, "Pearl Harbour", which also came out in 2001. Of the three, "Enemy of the Gates" is the only one which succeeds in successfully integrating military action with its human themes. It may well be the finest World War Two film of recent years. 9/10