Stalingrad

Improbabilities abound in Fedor Bondarchuk's oddly sentimental Stalingrad, my first look at a Russian blockbuster, just as grandiosely sensational as their American counterparts, so it seems, dazzling and heartbreaking, modestly skewed.

The film concerns one of the Second World War's Battle of Stalingrad's myriad crazed territorial trespasses wherein the Russians possess a building the Germans covet, hoping to win it back, their opposing forces exchanging ample audacities.

A beautiful young Russian ingénue still lives in the building (Mariya Smolnikova as Katya) and 5 hardened comrades fall for her as the fighting intensifies.

The situation's dire and the soldiers are countering inestimable odds with neither supplies nor reinforcements.

Katya offers a fleeting escape from the surrounding horrors, reminding the men that they're fighting for a greater purpose, substituting radiance for perdition, dignity for misery.

Even if what I've read about Stalin's reign in the Soviet Union makes it sound like hell on Earth.

It's difficult to determine whether or not the film is simply celebrating the sacrifices of courageous persons thrust into an abyss whose maddening pressures necessitated the emergence of heroism, the overwhelmed and underfunded Russians forced to bravely ignite their internal flames (one of the best scenes depicts this), or if it's glorifying the war itself, the scene where two would-be lovers sit back and watch the artillery light up the night sky like a fascist/communist fireworks display functioning as a romantic yet too distracting display, although had I been in a similar situation I too would have likely watched in wonder.

Focusing on the inherently deadly and ruinous nature of the display rather than any secondary futuristic aesthetic qualifications no doubt.

The deadly and ruinous nature of the display isn't referred to, discipline is brutal as a Russian sailor is shot for presenting an alternative point of view, Stalin isn't mentioned with loathing, the best speech is reserved for the enemy German captain (Thomas Krechmann/Kretschmann)(it reminded me of Robert Graves's description of Julius Caesar's pre-battle motivations in I, Claudius), in short, the discourses of the Left are largely absent (one Russian soldier is reprimanded for using the word retarded and there's a conciliatory frame whose presence is dismissible), which I was hoping would not be the case in a film celebrating Commie heroes, even if I'm (now) aware that it was mass-produced in Putin's Russia.

It's not necessarily that improbabilities abound, but when I watch these films and think, "this is a life or death situation and that's what tricked you?", I tend to use words such as improbable to describe what happens.

A must if you want to see your first Russian blockbuster, even if it's one of the worst movies you'll ever see.

I was naively hoping it would be similar to Elem Klimov's Come and See (all I knew about the film going in was that it was called Stalingrad and made in Russia).

Here's hoping Putin doesn't become any more Hitleresque.