Stalingrad

Thirty million Russians - civilians and soldiers - were slaughtered in World War II defending Europe from fascism. This German feature film attempts to convey the experience of “everyday” German soldiers in the battle for Stalingrad, which is often cited as the turning point for the European war. Though largely utilising the conventional generic tropes of the Hollywood war film, undoubtedly there are powerful scenes in this movie that attempt to capture the almost hallucinatory nature of the devastating defeat. “Stalingrad” has an epic sweep that at times seems to be a precursor of some of Spielberg’s narrative and directional flourishes in the subsequent “Saving Private Ryan.” That may be the result of both the films debt to the war films of Hollywood’s classical era, or it may also be reflective of both works’ need to fulfil certain propagandanistic functions at the turn of the millennium. For Spielberg it was to nostalgically celebrate the heroics of an earlier era seemingly uncontaminated by the moral ambivalence post-Vietnam. For the makers of “Stalingrad” - emerging from a recently reunified nation - there seems to be a need to delineate a clear demarcation between “evil” and “good” Germans within the overwhelming horror of Nazism. With Dominique Horwitz. In German with English subtitles