The strength of "Enemy at the Gates" lies in its quiet capacity to tell a story. While Jean-Jacques Annaud's ("Seven Years in Tibet") film will not likely go down in the annals of our most celebrated, prestigious war epics, it is precisely this picture's understated nature that lends it a surprising credibility.
"Enemy" recounts a typically overlooked (at least from a Western viewpoint), yet significant period in modern world history -- Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union -- otherwise known as the battle of Stalingrad from 1942-43.
Adapted from William Craig's nonfiction account of the siege, "Enemy" opened at this year's Berlin Film Festival to disapproval at the hands of many German critics. The film, financed with $80 million of German money, stars American Ed Harris and British golden boy Jude Law and follows a screenplay by Alain Godard and director Annaud, two Frenchmen. An ostensibly collaborative effort, German detractors insisted the film had gone Hollywood.
Regardless of the merit of this claim, "Enemy" departs the traditional Hollywood formula in a subtly significant way. Still saturated by much of Hollywood's shine and polish, "Enemy" does stir up the mix a bit.
Unlike a majority of other war films, "Enemy" accrues power from its silences, the film's interstitial moments, rather than attempting to capitalize on an overt appeal to heavy-handed action or sheer force. Caveat: if you like your warfare with plenty of testosterone, you might consider looking elsewhere.
Not that "Enemy" doesn't have plenty of blood and gore -- it does. However, more akin to a Hemingway novel, the film seeks to probe beyond shrapnel and firebombs, illumining the human motivation and competing desires that inevitably underlay all the wars that ever were.
The film has its good (perhaps not brilliant, but good) moments and its not so good moments. The final impression, favorable or not, is a product not so much of what the film says but of what it leaves unsaid, or at least what it says quietly.
For example, the drawn-out duel between famed Nazi sharpshooter Major Konig (Harris) and Russian sniper Vassili Zeitzev (Law) gets a bit tired by round six hundred. However, the lagging pace of this tete-a-tete in effect slows the film's narrative gait, forcing the viewer to accommodate his usual adrenaline-soaked war film expectations.
Instead, the viscous tempo, though probably a bit too expansive to effectively further the film's narrative aim, nonetheless works in an important way: it suspends the viewer's insatiable need for action, for violence and for "something to happen" -- it delays gratification.
In the space of this slowness, with the concomitant emotions of war more felt than seen, the film gains voice to tell a powerful story. It is not that the film is sans violence, and it is certainly not silent; but it does seek to tell its story in a different way by changing the role raw action plays in the narrative process.
At times, however, the film falls short. Joseph Fiennes' character, according to the script, is not as developed as he might be, and the love triangle that fuels much of the film's plot and subplot is at times annoying and unnecessary.
Also, the actors' British accents appear somewhat out of place on the Russian front but no more so than Ed Harris' American tongue does on the German side. While it is shortcomings such as these that prevent "Enemy at the Gates" from assuming its place next to more beloved cinematic texts like "Spartacus," "Braveheart" and "Saving Private Ryan," Annaud's film never pretends to be so lofty.
Some films attempt to capture historical moments as timeless reference points, preserving stories that are worth telling repeatedly because they will always be relevant to our meager, grand human lives. In a quest to imagine and explore the past, the filmmaker inevitably bites off more than he can chew.
This is especially the case with movies about epic events like wars. Film is a powerful medium, no doubt, but the cinematic image is rare that truly captures and conveys the truth of historical experience.
Perhaps "Enemy" is not exactly one of those films, but its method of telling a complex story in a simpler way, where that simple way turns out at closer glance to be deceivingly complex, is a lead more filmmakers should follow.
