How War Films Reflect the Human Cost of War

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 sympathetic—and neither are they portrayed very heroically—but 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 would be decided. This film is reflective of the despair that Germany felt upon losing the battle. The country went into the war with high hopes—which 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 confident—and 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 must have encompassed Germany after losing the battle to the Soviets.

One can certainly have sympathy and empathy for people who go through such dark times. The last soldier trying to make it out alive freezes to death in the snow is compelling to the bitter end. The film is great to look at from a technical perspective. It is very engaging in terms of how every scene is framed, how the lighting is used to bring those scenes to dramatic life. This is a film that really gets into the human side of the war, but in a way that really emphasizes the frailty, the brittleness, the temptation to yield oneself to horrors of the darkest places.

One way this film did enhance my understanding, is that it gave me a visual sense of what this war must have looked like on the Eastern Front, and what the sensations must have been like for many a soldier dealing with the elements, the dread, the nightmare, and the toil. This is a gritty film, and it goes in for realism, and so there is a kind of authenticity it offers in the sense that it wants you to see what things were like, if only on a surface level. That is something I can admire about the film. Not everyone gets to experience real war directly; so, it helps that people get a sense of it at least indirectly or through some kind of artistic representation that is at least faithful as best it can be to the realities of war. That is achieved in this film. The soldiers come across as normal people one might know in real life. They are caught in a brutal fight between two powers. They are hopeful, initially, for themselves. But the reality wears on them and it reveals a fundamental lack of preparedness.

I would recommend the film for this course. It is one of those films that offers a strong glimpse into the horrors of war. In terms of telling something about the war, it offers a glimpse into the horrific reality. It transcends the time, place, and subject of the conflict and speaks to the human side of war. It does not settle on just casting Germans or even Soviets as monsters or villains. Instead, it simply acknowledges that these people—these soldiers fighting as enemies—are really still people, still human beings who are being pushed and pulled and stripped apart and beaten down and abused. This will undoubtedly do things to a normal human being and take a giant toll. That is something to keep in mind when watching this movie: it really tells the story about the cost of war—not just in terms of a nation’s defeat but rather in terms of the human cost, the cost of the spirit.

There is also the issue of figuring out the historical details. With a subject like WW2, there are many factors to consider, as it was a war with many fronts and many motives, some hidden and some exposed. The film focuses mainly on the human side of things, but to understand the history behind this film, it makes us want to dig deeper into history. The movie definitely left me wanting to research and find more insight on the overall conflict. For that reason, I would definitely recommend it.