Enemy at the Gates

Enemy at the Gates (2001) follows a Soviet sniper during the siege of Stalingrad. Vasily Zaitsev is a shepherd from the Urals. When he arrives at Stalingrad he is not even given a weapon; there is one rifle between two men. A political officer notices his shooting and manufactures him as a hero: newspapers are printed, stories written, a symbol produced for morale. That is what the film describes best. The propaganda machine built around Zaitsev is as much the subject as the man. Then the Germans send a master marksman to kill him and the film becomes a duel between the two. That duel almost certainly never happened. Historians note that the only sources for it are Soviet accounts and Zaitsev's own book, published in 1956. No such officer appears in German records, and Germany had no sniper school before Stalingrad. Zaitsev gives dates for every other event in his book but none for this killing. And in the scene he describes, for the sun to glint off the German's scope, the man would have to be facing west, away from his own lines. So the event at the centre of the film may be a propaganda product. In Russia the film was criticised for showing Soviet soldiers shot from behind and spent carelessly. It was among the most expensive films made in Europe at the time. Jude Law, Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz star. It runs 131 minutes. Good for: war films, sieges, and sniper tension. Less good for: the history is weak and the love story wedged into it slows the film down.