ENEMA AT THE DOOR: an Foreigner Will Not Notice, a Russian Will Not Forgive

Rating: 1/10 (7 May 2009)

I got to see the widely publicized in the West movie "Enemy at the Gates", directed by Jean Jaques Annaud. After "Saving Private Ryan", which had left an overall good impression, I hoped that this Hollywood product would turn out to be on the same level. But contrary to my expectations... Well, let's start from the beginning.
From the first moments I was struck by the rosy, well-fed faces of the Russian soldiers going to the front. Of course, I understand that life in the West is nice and sweet, but where were the makeup artists? All Soviet soldiers wore brand new greatcoats. Throughout the entire movie I only saw well-fed, not to say fat, faces, and even Danilov's three day stubble (incidentally, why does he walk around unshaven in the army?) badly masks his well-groomed face. I think the director never even considered the fact that life on the Soviet home front in 1942 wasn't sweet, McDonalds restaurants just weren't there, and sausages didn't get buttered. I was also amused about how people riding inside the freight rail cars were standing. I think the director has never even tried to imagine how it felt to ride in such a car, how it shakes you from side to side, and far from anyone would manage to stay on his feet.
Meanwhile, the train arrives at some station, all the civilians are unloaded, soldiers are herded inside, and... some men started locking the cars! That's right! It turns out that Soviet soldiers had to be padlocked. Why? I don't know. Probably, the director believes that our grandfathers fought only from fear, that if it was up to them, they would've ran away, and nobody would've been left to fight the valiant German army.
Meantime, the train arrives at the Stalingrad station, the padlocks are unlocked, and evil officers start dragging the soldiers out of the cars! And another political officer stands nearby (probably, the chief one, and a big boss above the other political officers), waves a red flag, and yells into a tin megaphone. I don't know how our Western comrades see this picture, but it sent me into a spasm of laughter. I haven't seen such a silly scene even in the comedy series "Fitil'" (Fuse). But speaking seriously, this is already an insult, and it's more serious than it could seem in the beginning. Russian soldiers are shown as dumb cattle, led by the evil devils-political officers. And incidentally, political officers were different. Sh*t can occur anywhere, not just among the political officers, that's why depicting them in such perverted manner looks extremely insulting. And that is exactly how they are depicted! I specifically made several screen shots so that you could see that people with the most disgusting faces were selected for the roles of political officers. I don't know, why Jaques Annaud feels personally slighted by the political officers, maybe they stole his money or a cow, but his bitter hatred for our grandfathers literally oozes from the screen!
The scene where the soldiers were unloaded from the train reminded me of a mass escape from a psychiatric hospital, but not the Red Army. I don't know, perhaps the US Army troops unload in just such a manner?
The scene of an attack. I was simply shocked by the fact that the attack began at the whistle of a mad officer! Who proposed this nonsense to the director? Or did he think really hard, and then couldn't come up with anything better? Probably it's what they call "artistic license". The attack itself follows the best traditions of the Western idea of how could the Russians attack. In other words - complete rubbish. Soldiers simply run as fast as they can at the machine guns, like a herd of cattle! Machine guns fire long bursts at them. This insulting stupidity, under the name of "Human Waves", was invented in the West during the times of the Cold War, and Jaques Annaud simply faithfully portrayed that fairy tale on the big screen.