If you care to transcend the meaningless strategic details..

Rating: 8/10 (9 August 1999)

You can know know how many many divisions there were, where they were, how many were SS verses Wehrmacht or Panzer brigades and what type of insignia and weapons the men used, and the casualty rate verses the average daily temperature, but the point of this film is clearly that the mistakes in Stalingrad were far more reaching than logistics, the German high command or even knowing right from wrong. This film speaks about the potential trap of our own system when things go wrong and there is no way out at the level of the individual. This film is about the character of Russia formed from the inhuman tundra in winter, and what it means to slowly freeze to death without shelter wandering a hostile wasteland in the darkness of winter. This film shows the inhuman coldness as a metaphor of our own blatant denial of our own individuality for the sake of professionalism and following orders- as much as for a lack of reason as for a mere lack of heat. This film shows the real victims of modern chivalrous warfare- defenseless civilians in their homes. This film shows a ragged bit of love crushed as a simple matter of course within this context, and that's more timely and far scarier than some chapter of military history. To imagine that this film was made by 'war buffs' is a sad mistake.