Enemy at the Gates, 2001

Enemy At The Gates, 2001
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Jude Law, Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes



Stage; Home TV Selection

Enemy in short: During the WWII battle of Stalingrad, two snipers, a Russian, and a German, are locked in a battle of wills and marksmanship, while the Russian is boosted to the status of hero by a political official.


Preps: none whatsoever. However, I am aware this is an awarded war movie.


Reality: Sometimes war movies strike you with their unability to hide. It's one thing reading about crimes in war and fighting for the cause, it's totally another seeing that for real. Or at least, an image of this for real on screen, in raw as it is shown here.

The piece shows policy, fighting and changing sides, dying for your cause. The battle for Stalingrad is one of the most notorious ones, most talked about in that area, and the fight with most guesses what happened. I imagine that every director takes his turn into making some of the history online, vivid and real. Now, how much of this is actually taken by history and how much made up by director - it's up to you to decide.
In this case, I sense a deep insight into the emotions of soldier that seeks piece and finds love. And dies while trying to defend it. Dying of the young kids or better put, killing young children, makes me sick.
Thrown in the middle of the fight, with the rats, dust, and lost hope, the viewer is put right in between fires, making it all really hard not be touched by. And you will be, the war fear will go right into your veins and make you never want to experience it. And in my opinion, this is the mere purpose of having these movies. Although they make us stiff and hard watching the scenes of shooting and killing over and over again (in the sense that the media doesn't surprise us at all in these days anymore), they also imply how useless and painful is to have a fight, war, even a world war. No fun or gain, just loss. To each individual.

Love in a war - making every moment count. More than we are really realizing in the real life, although we should. War circumstances make just everything move faster and happen with a cause.


My personal rating: 8,0 (a superb movie on Stalingrad war).
Enemy at the gates on IMDB