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Butchery...
Nov. 10th, 2001 02:46 pmGalina and I watched Enemy at the Gates last night. It was a powerful, powerful film. After watching it, Galina was surprised to find it had not been nominated for any Oscars.
The opening sequence of the film presented a smooth escalation of tension that began as a fairly quiet scene of soldiers and civilians on a train. The train stops, the civilians get out and more soldiers board. The tension is racked up a notch as we watch locks being put on the doors of the cattle cars.
At their destination, we are shown reaction shots of the soldiers looking out of the door. The camera turns and we see a river - the Volga - and a burning hell on the other side: Stalingrad, or what's left of it. The soldiers are loaded onto boats, for the trip across the Volga. Part way across, they are beset by German "Stuka" aircraft, which repeatedly strafe the boats. The few souls who seek safety by jumping off the boats into the water are shot by their own officers.
The pucker factor one experiences at this point in the movie is at about the same level as the Normandy landing scene in Saving Private Ryan. Tight.
Escaping from decks awash in bodies and blood, the survivors who reach the opposite shore are issued rifles, but only one for every two men. A sergeant shouts at them, through a megaphone, "When the one carrying the rifle is killed, the other one picks it up and continues to fight." This begins to sound like Catch-22 on drugs. What's going on?
An answer comes momentarily. A whistle sounds and this half-armed rabble moves out to attack the Germans, who seem calm, well-equipped, and ready for anything. A machine-gun is set up behind the advancing mob, pointing at the Germans. As the attacking infantry comes within range, the Germans open fire, with devastating effect. By now, any normal person watching this sequence must be dizzy with horror. This is beyond "pucker factor," and off in some strange twilight zone populated by rabid Valkyries, who choose the dead in wholesale lots.
Cut to pieces, the survivors turn back to withdraw toward their own lines, only to be met with fire from the aforementioned machine gun. Retreat was cowardice, and was met with lead. As a distant spectator, your dizziness gives way to numbness. Even I, who knew about such scenes from conversations with grizzled old veterans of the Eastern Front and from reading books such as The Gulag Archipelago, felt my mouth go dry and my palms get wet. The war violence shown in this movie is very vivid.
The rest of the film, of course, could not maintain this progression of terror. Then again, such a progression was neither necessary or, frankly, possible. We are introduced to Vassily Zaitsev, an expert marksman who learned the craft of straight shooting at his grandfather's knee, and the rest of the story offers a fine network of tension between him (as an ever-more deadly - and famous - sniper), a political officer who befriends him, a young woman (who provides tension between the two), and a German officer sent to kill him (something that the historical record says never happened).
As an aside, I found Bob Hoskins' performance - as Nikita Khruschev - to be very well done; so much so that it took me a good hard look to convince myself it was actually him. His snarling characterization of Nikita Serveyevitch was right on the money.
This is a film worth seeing, but having seen it, one longs next to see something light and cheerful.
Cheers...
The opening sequence of the film presented a smooth escalation of tension that began as a fairly quiet scene of soldiers and civilians on a train. The train stops, the civilians get out and more soldiers board. The tension is racked up a notch as we watch locks being put on the doors of the cattle cars.
At their destination, we are shown reaction shots of the soldiers looking out of the door. The camera turns and we see a river - the Volga - and a burning hell on the other side: Stalingrad, or what's left of it. The soldiers are loaded onto boats, for the trip across the Volga. Part way across, they are beset by German "Stuka" aircraft, which repeatedly strafe the boats. The few souls who seek safety by jumping off the boats into the water are shot by their own officers.
The pucker factor one experiences at this point in the movie is at about the same level as the Normandy landing scene in Saving Private Ryan. Tight.
Escaping from decks awash in bodies and blood, the survivors who reach the opposite shore are issued rifles, but only one for every two men. A sergeant shouts at them, through a megaphone, "When the one carrying the rifle is killed, the other one picks it up and continues to fight." This begins to sound like Catch-22 on drugs. What's going on?
An answer comes momentarily. A whistle sounds and this half-armed rabble moves out to attack the Germans, who seem calm, well-equipped, and ready for anything. A machine-gun is set up behind the advancing mob, pointing at the Germans. As the attacking infantry comes within range, the Germans open fire, with devastating effect. By now, any normal person watching this sequence must be dizzy with horror. This is beyond "pucker factor," and off in some strange twilight zone populated by rabid Valkyries, who choose the dead in wholesale lots.
Cut to pieces, the survivors turn back to withdraw toward their own lines, only to be met with fire from the aforementioned machine gun. Retreat was cowardice, and was met with lead. As a distant spectator, your dizziness gives way to numbness. Even I, who knew about such scenes from conversations with grizzled old veterans of the Eastern Front and from reading books such as The Gulag Archipelago, felt my mouth go dry and my palms get wet. The war violence shown in this movie is very vivid.
The rest of the film, of course, could not maintain this progression of terror. Then again, such a progression was neither necessary or, frankly, possible. We are introduced to Vassily Zaitsev, an expert marksman who learned the craft of straight shooting at his grandfather's knee, and the rest of the story offers a fine network of tension between him (as an ever-more deadly - and famous - sniper), a political officer who befriends him, a young woman (who provides tension between the two), and a German officer sent to kill him (something that the historical record says never happened).
As an aside, I found Bob Hoskins' performance - as Nikita Khruschev - to be very well done; so much so that it took me a good hard look to convince myself it was actually him. His snarling characterization of Nikita Serveyevitch was right on the money.
This is a film worth seeing, but having seen it, one longs next to see something light and cheerful.
Cheers...
