The Great Patriotic Movie

The Battle of Stalingrad is the subject of Fyodor Bondarchuck’s full-blooded World War II epic CTAΛИHГPA∆.  This is the fourth film centering on this pivotal battle of the Eastern Front in the last 25 years, although each took a different approach.  The 1989 two-part movie was ambitious in scope and followed the battle from beginning to end, while the stoic-yet-powerful 1993 German version told its story through the German experience.  2001’s somewhat silly ‘Enemy at the Gates’ was based on a 1973 book which recounts of an alleged sniper duel between famed Russian sniper Vasily Zaitsev and a German master sniper named Erwin König or Heinz Thorvald.

 

Bondarchuk, who previously directed the Afghanistan anti-war opus ‘9th Company,’ displayed his virtuosity once again in CTAΛИHГPA∆.  Filmed entirely using IMAX 3D digital technology, the $30-million CTAΛИHГPA∆’s cinematography is simply breathtaking, with the ruins and shattered landscape of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) rendered in vivid detail.  Loosely based on the defense of ‘Pavlov’s House,’ in which a small group of Soviet soldiers led by Sergeant Yakov Pavlov held off repeated German attempts to take it for 58 days, CTAΛИHГPA∆ perfectly captured the brutality of urban combat, with some of the most realistic close-quarters battle scenes ever put on screen.  Seeing the 5-month long battle in microcosm through the eyes of a small group of Russian scouts and a German officer, Hauptmann Kahn (Thomas Kretschmann, who also played Leutnant Witzland in the 1993 movie), CTAΛИHГPA∆ not only depicted the futility and despair of war but also managed to humanize the opposing sides without resorting to jingoism.  Like 'Enemy at the Gates,' the movie also has an obligatory romantic subplot, but fortunately it wasn't so overwrought with sentimental melodrama as to detract us from the story.

 

For the most part, CTAΛИHГPA∆  is historically accurate and authentic in the uniforms, weapons and equipment during the fall/winter campaign of 1942 Russia, although the Panzer IV tanks with schurzen which spearheaded the Germans' final assault (they're T-55’s modded as German tanks) did not appear until later in the war.  Also, a German soldier in the movie referred to Friedrich Paulus (the commander of 6th Army) as ‘Field Marshal,’ even though the movie's events took place in November 1942 before the German surrender.  There are the notably cheesy ‘Hollywood’ moments as well, such as a scene in which the Russians fired a 45mm anti-tank gun at a German-controlled building used as a HQ across from them by richocheting the round off of a knocked-out T-34 tank between them and gave the Germans shell‑shock.  I don’t presume to be an expert but, assuming they fired an AT shell, would it damage the building and create shell‑shock?  And if it was an HE round, wouldn’t it have exploded when it strikes the T-34 and never reach the building across the street?  Am I overanalyzing here?  Who cares, CTAΛИHГPA∆ is still better than ‘Enemy at the Gates,’ which I can never forgive for the stupid scene where Ed Harris ran out of his well-concealed cover to be shot by Jude Law.

Grade: A-
 

I'm a sucker for WWII movies...... and the Cyrillic alphabet