Melodramatic plot elements invade `Gates'
By MARIO BIRD
Scene Movie Critic
With a strong cast featuring multiple Academy Award nominees, wartime special effects rivaling the monumental "Saving Private Ryan," and a propaganda campaign approaching the Soviet version within its story, "Enemy at the Gates" was positioned to be the first blockbuster hit of 2001. Unfortunately, the above qualities do not a movie make, as writer-director Jean-Jacques Annaud ("Seven Years in Tibet") implies through his latest cinematic effort.
Joseph Fiennes ("Shakespeare in Love"), one of the actors who helped usurp "Saving Private Ryan's" rightful place as Best Picture of 1998, stars as Russian propaganda officer Danilov in an enigmatic performance. His fate becomes inextricably entwined with the sharpshooting GI Vassily, played by Jude Law (Supporting Actor nominee, "The Talented Mr. Ripley"), when he watches Vassily kill five German officers during the initial melee of the battle for Stalingrad.
Recognizing the heroic potential of a working class hero such as Vassily, Danilov launches a nationwide campaign to immortalize the sniper that single-handedly resurrects the Russian fighting spirit.
Things are even further skewed when Annaud introduces the inevitable love triangle between Danilov, Vassily and the militant-yet-beautiful Tania, rendered by Rachel Weisz ("The Mummy"). Two-time Supporting Actor nominee Ed Harris ("The Truman Show," "Apollo 13") appears as the Nazi sniper counterpart to Vassily, and the majority of the plot is driven by the multiple standoffs between the two.
Similar to "Saving Private Ryan," the first 20 minutes of "Enemy at the Gates" are rife with explosions, death and the horrible shock each soldier faces when approaching front lines for the first time. However, the Soviet defense of Stalingrad was much different than the Allied invasion of Normandy. The chilling command bawled out by a weary officer as soldiers disembark in pairs, "The first man takes a gun, the second man takes it when the first man is killed," frighteningly captures the utter poverty and disorganization Russian forces brought against the Nazi blitzkrieg. Men are ordered to charge against a well-entrenched German line while being mowed down by enemy machine guns, and then face "friendly" fire as they are forced to retreat. Annaud captures the emotion and ruinous landscape of this hair-raising scene in a realistic and artistic manner.
Regrettably, this realism is replaced with shoddy romanticism for the remainder of the film. For starters, the two underlying obstacles Nazi forces faced in Stalingrad were the blistering cold and supply shortages. Nowhere are these two effects evident. Fiennes is the only actor who appears to be subject to starvation, due mainly to his naturally gaunt disposition.
Annaud apparently justifies this loss of realism by inflating the quasi-relationships between Fiennes, Law and Weisz. But the script for such interaction reeks of pulp romance novels. More than one character is presumed dead, only to miraculously appear after an appropriate interval of suspense. And the vengeful motives that propel Weisz to the front lines as a sniper are incongruous with her otherwise sensitive character.
The only deviation Annaud makes from this starry-eyed setting is the requisite sex scene between Law and Weisz. This is not a stereotypical Hollywood copulation. Instead of being marked by sensuous foreplay, appropriate lighting and aspects of mise-en-scene that idealize sex, Annaud frames this grotesque liaison with all the realism the relationship between Law and Weisz lacked. Although nudity is admittedly kept to a minimum, the extremely suggestive nature of the scene is disconcerting in its simplicity, and perhaps recollects Annaud's directorial work in "Quest for Fire," which featured graphic intercourse between caveman and cavewoman.
There are some redeeming aspects of "Enemy at the Gates:" Fiennes' character is ultimately disillusioned with the Soviet regime he served so diligently, and the scale of Annaud's vision is reflected in the cinematography. However, the hackneyed plot and wasted use of a potentially intriguing historical landscape make "Enemy at the Gates" an enemy only unto itself.
-- two shamrocks (out of five)
All Scene Stories for Thursday, March 29, 2001
