Joseph Vilsmaier
Stalingrad

It is September 1942, and the German Sixth Army has almost reached the Volga River during the bloody battles against the Red Army for the conquest of the important industrial city of Stalingrad; this is the setting in which the film takes place, one of the bloodiest battles of the last century.

Among the ruins of the city move the characters that populate the film, a group of German soldiers who confront the disillusionment of finding themselves fighting for a cause they no longer believe in.

"Stalingrad" is certainly not an innovative film, and it is certainly not the most representative among war or denunciation films, but it effectively expresses its message through a good dose of violence and powerful narrative craft. It must be said that it does not remotely convey what the Battle of Stalingrad was psychologically and historically, as the focus is more on the psychology of the individual characters: the battle could be any, and the characters could belong to any army. The message is not dissimilar to that of literary classics like "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Remarque, from which it blatantly draws inspiration: just as the protagonist discovers himself to be the same as the enemy immersed in the mud with a man he has just killed, so does Vilsmaier portray the encounter between Germans and Russians, intent on gathering their dead; the disillusionment of Lieutenant Witzland (Kretschmann, the only somewhat famous actor in the cast) when he realizes what war is, and gets crushed in the grinding gears of militarism, is the same described by Remarque. But more than Remarque, the film aims to pay homage to Sven Hassel, a more or less known writer who, not unlike Remarque, narrated the horrors of war, while still creating stereotypes that seem to inspire at least half of war cinema; from mutinous and rebellious soldiers against authority, to the relentless violence of military bureaucracy, up to the dramatic and detailed description of the violence of the clash.

Vilsmaier shows scenes of extreme violence without hesitation, which have nothing to envy to films like Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan", but is not adequately supported by the necessary technical means, thus sometimes resulting in being not very effective. Although tied to Hasselian stereotypes, the characters are well-developed from a psychological standpoint, through which one can perceive a continuous exasperation and wear and tear, and are rightly represented by mostly anonymous faces, as if to underline the anonymity of some small pawns in a large game.

If the first part of the film does not differ much from what has already been seen in other war films, with house-to-house battles, camaraderie, and unbearable violence, the second half of the film is probably even heavier, precisely because the war seems to dissolve, along with all its camaraderie and violent stereotypes, leaving space for a limbo of snow and desolation, where one can die without even having an enemy to fight against anymore, devoid of any humanity, without any hope or interest in surviving. Despite good intentions, the film, as mentioned before, sometimes falls short technically, with acting not always up to par and some moments that are overly confusing and dragged out (like the sequence in the sewers); for the most meticulous, there are even some minor historical inaccuracies, which can still be easily overlooked.

In conclusion, "Stalingrad" is a good anti-war and anti-militarist film, which doesn't even give the usual justification that all the violence committed by the protagonists is done rightfully, against very evil men who do nothing but scream and kill sadistically as Spielberg does, but it shows us the war from multiple perspectives, from the point of view of those who had to fight the "good guys" against their will.

A film to be rediscovered, especially for those who appreciated the aforementioned Sven Hassel, whom Vilsmaier blatantly pays homage to.