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"Stalingrad"
Feb. 5th, 2006 01:15 amWow. "Stalingrad." (Germany, 1993)
Bloody and tense and unflinching and un-melodramatic and bleak and filthy and horrific and you can tell it wasn't made in Hollywood if only because ( don't read this if you don't want to know the end. ) No cameras lingering over battlefields, no discomfort with the depiction of the intense relationships between and among soldiers. And it managed not to be about Nazism, really, for all that it was a German film about German soldiers starting to lose Germany's war.
A little like "Saving Private Ryan," only the constant shock of warfare wasn't exploited for an old man crying at a cemetery or used as a backdrop for a love story (as they say "Enemy at the Gates" was, which was apparently also about the Battle of Stalingrad). No time to mourn for fallen friends. Dwindling belief in getting out alive. Cold sores and gangrene and blank stares and the breakdown of hierarchy and de facto personal alliances with enemies. Too cold to feel.
( Three scenes I liked best. )
In short (well, a little late for that now), if you're into World War Two movies that don't feature Americans or Britons saving the day, put this one on your list.
Bloody and tense and unflinching and un-melodramatic and bleak and filthy and horrific and you can tell it wasn't made in Hollywood if only because ( don't read this if you don't want to know the end. ) No cameras lingering over battlefields, no discomfort with the depiction of the intense relationships between and among soldiers. And it managed not to be about Nazism, really, for all that it was a German film about German soldiers starting to lose Germany's war.
A little like "Saving Private Ryan," only the constant shock of warfare wasn't exploited for an old man crying at a cemetery or used as a backdrop for a love story (as they say "Enemy at the Gates" was, which was apparently also about the Battle of Stalingrad). No time to mourn for fallen friends. Dwindling belief in getting out alive. Cold sores and gangrene and blank stares and the breakdown of hierarchy and de facto personal alliances with enemies. Too cold to feel.
( Three scenes I liked best. )
In short (well, a little late for that now), if you're into World War Two movies that don't feature Americans or Britons saving the day, put this one on your list.
