War without the glorification: review of Stalingrad (2013) for the People's Voice
Stalingrad
directed
by Fedor Bondarchuk, 2013,
reviewed
by Saleh Waziruddin
Unlike
other films about the battle of Stalingrad, this first Russian
IMAX-3D film, the second of recent big-budget Russian World War II
movies, doesn’t follow the twists and turns of this turning point
in the war. Instead it focuses on a building held by five Soviet
soldiers and a young woman, who we learn is the mother of the
narrator. The building is the only Soviet strongpoint between the
Germans and the Volga River, beyond which is “India” or the rest
of the world.
The
film has been criticized, both in the West and the East, by the
capitalist as well as socialist press, for having Hollywood
superficiality and, maybe an even bigger sin for some critics, making
the Germans look like “the bad guys”.
The
film may fall short as a work of art, and the slow-motion CGI-powered
scenes of hand-to-hand mortal combat and destruction do look like a
video game. But one important distinction between Stalingrad (2013)
and the war films from the West is that it does not glorify war, let
alone the invader. Even anti-war scripts come off like war propaganda
reels in Western cinema, as happened with Das
Boot.
The
war between the Soviet Union and Germany was a different kind of war
than World War I, or even the earlier phases of World War II. This is
made clear in a scene where the Soviet soldiers break discipline and
charge German soldiers who, merely to provoke the defenders, set a
Jewish woman and her child on fire in full view of the building.
Unlike the wars glorified by big business media, such as WWI being
celebrated by the Conservative government, this was not a war between
empires sending millions of working people to senseless deaths for a
bigger share of the world.
The
Nazis were the
bad guys. This distinction is needed today when the hordes of NATO
and “coalitions of the willing” are invading and destroying one
country after another without a Soviet Union to stop them. The
hypocrisy of those who unconsciously adopt the point of view of the
invader is shown in a scene where a German officer, having just raped
a Russian woman, complains to her of the horror of the “bandits”
resisting the occupation of their country. The main merit of the film
is that, in a time when war and militarization are glorified, whether
in the news or the big screen or even sports, here is a movie that
shows war as a horror of death and destruction, without
glorification.
There
is even a nod to the social system of the Soviet Union. We learn one
of the soldiers was a juvenile delinquent who was taken in to work in
a factory, where his talent as a tenor was discovered and supported,
to the extent of sending him to a conservatory and eventually a
singing career. It was only two decades earlier that monarchist
Russia had collapsed in the face of a less successful German army.
Surely the Soviet Union’s policies in the years between had
something to do with providing the Soviet people the material means
to overcome the invader, liberate Europe, and keep the Nazis from
reaching “India".
