Stalingrad – Film Review
Director: Fedor Bondarchuck
Starring: Philippe Reinhardt, Thomas Kretschmann, Mariya Smolnikova and Yanina Studilina
Release Date: Feb 21
A Russian produced film being released in 3D, Stalingrad tells the story of a group of Russian soldiers attempting to hold their ground in a damaged building, amidst the devastated city during a battle against the Germans in World War II. As they anticipate the Nazis next move, they become closer to one another while befriending a remaining female resident of the building in Stalingrad.
I think the fact that I knew very little about this film and Russian cinema in general, is what led to my experience of viewing Stalingrad to be a rather strange experience. Naturally, I didn’t really know what to expect. But what was strange was that, halfway through this film, I still kind of didn’t know what to expect.
I suppose my lack of knowledge of Russian cinema doesn’t come too much into play. In that sense, I simply don’t have a feel of what’s normal, stylistically, for a Russian film. My not being the biggest history buff might come into play a bit more, but then again I think any good historical drama should have a story that is emotionally accessible to its audience, despite the varying levels of historical knowledge that each individual audience member might have.
What I can tell you confidently is that there are two things about Stalingrad that differ greatly in quality: its sense of drama and its style of action, and the difference is staggering.
Just to get this out of the way, the drama is decent. The story of the film, to put it really bluntly, is about how war is horrible, the Nazis were awful, but in such terrible times, joy can be salvaged in small ways and these little bits of joy are important to hang onto. Nothing new, but something that still has merit in modern cinema.
In terms of story-telling, I felt pretty lost for roughly the first half hour of the film’s two hour duration, however once I had a good idea of what was happening and where the film was going, I did develop an interest and familiarity with the characters. The cast is consistent and more than competent in holding the film together but there were no surprises about how things played out. Overall the story and how it was told was fine, but the poor structure and overused score prevented me from being too engaged, and instead I could only follow the film functionally. As I mentioned, the structure is poor and the film’s two hour (or rather 131 minute) duration felt a bit excessive. The voice over narrative dives into overly expositional descriptions of some of the film’s characters, too late into the film for anything of that detail to be set up, and it is also this voice over narrative, revealed in the beginning and the end of the film to be told by a contemporary character, that feels pretty unnecessary and left me finding it harder to hold onto whatever core message the film had.
But the drama is decent and, despite these flaws, the film’s story is perfectly followable and digestible, however as I mentioned, the difference between this and the film’s action is staggering and the reason for this is because the action in the movie is frankly ridiculous.
It’s got everything you wouldn’t expect from a World War II based film, like CGI spraying blood, bullet-time sequences and Zack Snyder-esque slow motion that jumps in and out to create a false sense of excitement. It was this that really put me off the film. In fact the comparison between the film’s direction and Zack Snyder’s films is worth emphasising. Stalingrad also contains needlessly eccentric sound effects during fight scenes and has a large amount of stylistic CGI and digital cinematography much like Zack Snyder’s films, specifically Watchmen. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Watchmen had an influence on this film. It’s unfortunate because these choices in direction for that film, I felt, were inappropriate too. Without giving too much away, both films even go so far to have scenes of a sensitive and sexual nature, that don’t work because of the inclusion of the eccentric sound effects and jarring slow motion. It’s bad enough that the way the action is displayed seems fetishistic, but when this direction is used for more intimate or vulnerable scenes it really just feels wrong.
Every time there was a battle scene of any kind I was completely taken out of the film because of this stylistic shift, but when the film returned to its dramatic scenes I wasn’t too far removed, but ultimately the best way to described the film overall is to say it’s not great.
So, Stalingrad is an overly polished action drama and while its dramatic side is somewhat redeemable, it’s not redeemable enough to surpass the simply dumb action based elements and the result is an overblown film that’s not completely disasterous but more or less forgettable.
Score: 2.5/5
Written by Seamus Hanly
