No 'Enemy' of Mine

Jean-Jacques Annaud created a difficult task for himself when he decided to direct a mainstream film about the battle of Stalingrad. In order to make the film palatable, he had to pull out all the stops. Not only is Enemy at the Gates rumored to be the most expensive film ever made in Continental Europe, but it also stars attractive men with important names-Jude Law, Ed Harris and Joseph Fiennes-and contains one of the best sex scenes in modern cinema. For the most part, Annaud succeeds in his goal; his re-creation of one of the worst battles of World War II is beautiful and keeps its audience on the edge of their seats until the bitter end. Although the Russians won the 1942-43 battle of Stalingrad, they lost 1.1 million men (in contrast to the Axis' 800,000) defending a strategically trivial city. From the beginning, we see that the Russian army is one that values materials over men. They supply the conscripted soldiers, who are brought to Stalingrad in cattle cars, with one rifle for every two men, telling the second man to take the gun when the first man falls. Additionally, each of the soldiers is just as likely to get shot by Russian officers for turning back than he is to be mowed down by the Germans. The plot, which is set within this six month battle, is just slightly more fun. As the film's tagline reads, "Where a battle between two nations became a conflict between two men," Enemy at the Gates is essentially a spy-versus-spy battle between two snipers. It is only after the first couple of cinematographically beautiful and appropriately gory war is really really bad scenes that we meet our hero. Vassily Zaitsev (Jude Law) is a peasant who has been taught to sharpshoot by his grandfather. Distractingly, he and many of the other Russian characters in this film all sport British accents. But beyond that, Law, with his infamously blue eyes and pretty face, is much more fit to play British royalty than a dingy Russian peasant who can barely write. We must forgive him, however, because he is so much fun to watch, and so terribly good at knocking off German officers. The film purports to be based on a true story, and while the legend of the hero Vassily Zaitsev exists, he may have been an invention of Russian propaganda. Joseph Fiennes plays Danilov, an officer whose main responsibility is to write such propaganda to boost the morale of the troops and the Russian people. When these two young men meet each other it is friendship at first sight, and Danilov makes Vassily the center of a propaganda campaign based on the soldier's successes, creating the catch-phrase, "How many German officers have you shot today?" Danilov's campaign is successful. The Germans, upset by anything that helps the Russian morale, and needing a morale boost themselves since their officers are being picked off one-by-one by bullets that seem to come from nowhere, send their prize sniper from Berlin, Major Koenig (Ed Harris) to get Vassily. It is not clear how Major Koenig knows perfect Russian (or in this case English), but understanding his enemies is just all in a day's work for him. Koenig is always one step ahead of Vassily, and in scene after nail-biting scene, the two men stalk each other amidst the ruins of the city. The secondary plot beyond this duel is a romance. Rachel Weisz plays Tania, the woman who must choose between our two young Russian heroes. Her decision seems simple at first she should pick the handsome and famous hero who kills people over a simple propaganda officer. However, Annaud wisely complicates the plot by making both Tania and Danilov Jewish. They also have a familial connection, especially after Tania's family has been brutally murdered by the Germans. This religious connection brings a depth to the film that is especially needed at the moment it is brought up, when the cat-and-mouse game is a little slow. Tania's heart-wrenching story about how her parents were killed reminds any viewer what this war was all about. Just as the Russian army didnot want to waste rifles on soldiers, the Germans did not want to waste bullets on Jews; in the case of Tania's parents, they tied the Jews together in twos and shot one member of each pair off a bridge as a dead weight to make the other drown. The movie's main duel combined with the romance is enough to make the movie a riveting watch, but not quite enough to make it a good one. Apart from the setting, this film is not original in any way, and will probably not go down in history with the likes of The Bridge on the River Kwai or Saving Private Ryan. In some ways, Enemy at the Gates takes some very American easy ways out. Killing innocent children is a cheap way to evoke pity and fear,and the way some of the characters speak out against communism, you would think the Cold War was still going on: The film can not be complete until Danilov has realized the flaws of his Marxist ideology. The film does not glorify the Russians, it glorifies heros, and certainly this strategy is better than the glorification of the Red Army. However, the deification of Vassily at the end of the film detracts from the overall sense of horror that we glean from the devastating scenes of war