Stalingrad 1993 Film Review
Stalingrad, directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, is a powerful and bleak film. It certainly is reflective of the bleakness of the battle that defined the Eastern Front in World War II in that ultimate clash between Germany and the Soviet Union. It drops the viewer onto the frontlines and lets him experience the torment, the anguish, the nightmare scenario, and ultimately the despair and death that follow.
There is a grittiness about the film that gives it a sense of realism. The film seems to have a realistic portrayal of what actual soldiers experienced during that time period. This makes it easy to be sympathetic towards the soldiers. What makes this film so interesting, perhaps, is that you get to sympathize with the German soldiers for once. Of course, not all of them are sympatheticand neither are they portrayed very heroicallybut there is something humane in the treatment of the characters.
The film also has more of a modernized experience that puts modern sensibilities and traumas into the characters of a 1940s world. It is not always easy to tell what you are getting with a movie, whether the characters are accurate reflections of the time and place they are meant to represent, or whether they are mere vessels for whatever attitudes and experiences people of our day and age are carrying around, dressed up in trappings from another era. The Battle of Stalingrad was certainly an important one in WW2 because it was here that the fate of Europe...
This film is reflective of the despair that Germany felt upon losing the battle. The country went into the war with high hopeswhich is reflected in the characters as they are leaving Italy for the Russian front on a train. They are talking about owning property in Russia and how much
land they will have. They are hopeful and confidentand have no idea what really awaits them in terms of the Soviet war machine. The beginning of the film, tonally, is bright and warm; the ending of the film is cold and bleak. In that sense, I would say I liked that the film reflected something of the growth of the existential dread that surely...
…research and find more
insight on the overall
conflict. For that reason, I would definitely recommend it.
I would also say that, aesthetically, the film is pleasing and enjoyable to watch. It has that cinematic quality, so unique to the film stock of the 1990s, which I find very appealing. The colors are never overbearing so as to feel unworldly or unreal. The cinematography and costumes are interesting in terms of how they reveal, in a nonjudgmental way, a situation and a time and place that has been judged rarely severely by history. I like the fact that the film seems to have a heart of its own and story to tell that the viewer really does not even get to receive totally. It is as if the film is giving just a bit and inviting the viewer to come back for more some other time in the future if he wants. With Stalingrad I never got the sense that the film was talking down to me or disrespecting the subject matter, the characters, or the art of cinema. I appreciated that.
Bibliography
Vilsmaier, Joseph. Stalingrad. Strand Releasing,…
