Film Flam

Ours Is Not To Wonder Why

Stalingrad

INFO: “Stalingrad” follows the progress of a German Platoon through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After having half their number wiped out and after being placed under the command of a sadistic Captain, the Lieutenant of the platoon leads his men to desert. The men of the platoon attempt to escape from the city which is now surrounded by the Soviet Army. (via imdb)

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German films that take place during the second World War or that use it as a backdrop for events, are always interesting to me. The perspective of German filmmakers is a fascinating one; how does one reconcile events so horrendous and catastrophic without giving themselves a pass? Is there a way to stand in solidarity with the world in its condemnation of a previous generations actions without disgracing your countrymen’s legacy?

The way these topics are often handled by American filmmakers is usually very direct. Often you have genre films (Westerns, War films) that deal with a binary morality. “We did good” or “We did bad”.

American war dramas of the last few years have held to this approach, with American documentaries adding a new variant; ambiguity. Both have had varying degrees of success. German filmmakers have taken a really interesting approach: abstraction. If your film is about WWII, why not make it about the nature of war.

Taken as such, Stalingrad as a film, is a curious thing. Less a story about the German experience during the war and more of the story of Soldiers in any war. A special care seems to have been taken into the dramatization and depiction of the daily events in soldiers lives; discussion of superior officers, questions about the nature of being soldiers, waiting for mail, waiting for food, munitions, and ultimately, awaiting an end to the war.

These events are portrayed with a respect to the profession of a soldier and manage to steer clear of a lot of what American filmmaking has dane; teeter between a hero worship of the WWII soldier and the two dimensional emotional cog in the machine of warfare. The more successful WWII films all contain these archetypes¹. Yet they don’t really appear in any obvious way. Here, instead of shoving all of the paradigms into one character’s corner they’re spread across soldiers. Some are weak emotionally but strong combatants, some have loved ones back home that they either want to be near and some don’t even care. For most of the film the characters are well balanced individuals, played by actors with a deft emotional range.

It’s not until the last half hour or so, that the film transitions from a film about soldiers and their actions in a WWII war zone; to a film about the dehumanization of soldiers by forces outside of their control. Taken further, the film becomes about the absurdist nature of war and the actions that people take in the face of it. This topic,taken to its logical conclusion, becomes a way to comment on some of the issues that emerged about the German soldier during the Holocaust. The mantra of “just following orders” is commented on pointedly, when a group of soldiers choose to become deserters rather than take further part in the brutal and grisly treatment of enemy soldiers.

Towards the end of the film it seems that the filmmakers have stopped making a movie about a historical battle, but instead have decided to place ethical questions about war in the path of the protagonists. This manages to never feel clumsy, but does turn a potential war epic into what could easily be a big screen adaptation of a stage play. This stagey-mess is evident throughout. Actors occasionally seem to be projecting their voices to the back of the auditorium, and the production design and camera work seems to be designed for a proscenium.

Stalingrad, aside from its themes, is not a very big movie production wise. Along with its hammy performances, (something that has been common in my limited exposure to German films) the film is littered with what I’m calling: Strange German Framing. A technique which is comprised of shooting someone from below their eyeline with a wide lens; their head cropped just above the hairline and somewhere in the middle of the Adam’s apple. This framing reminds me of European propaganda posters, the end of the dolly shots in Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, with actors looking at something just above the camera / audience’s head. Mostly this is evident in shots that come at the end of scenes, and function as transitional mechanisms; merging the expression on the actors face or piece of dialogue, with the next shot. None of these techniques seems to be used in the battle scenes, which loom large in the narrative, but not cinematically.

Battle sequences are mostly shot in wide shots or two shots. Large² groups of soldiers move toward something and the movie cuts to a two shot of a pair of soldiers firing their weopons. This cutting style, while grammatically correct, adds a disjointed feel to the action but also seems to add to action sequences energy

One of the most notable things in Stalingrad is director Joseph Vilsmaier’s ability to imagine the horrors of war as surrealist portraits and landscapes. While something like Saving Private Ryan attempts to shock you with the speed and carnage of war, Stalingrad (presumably due it’s smaller budget) takes a much more minimalist approach to the gore. The violence comes in strange moments and hangs over other actions on the battlefield, often its as if you’re in the midst of mission critical task but cannot turn away from something. It feels as if your eyes can’t quite process why a man is standing buried waist deep in the snow with his arms blown off. This confusion, is a beautiful mirror to the overall narrative purpose of the film.

These uncertainties are also matched by the gradual deterioration of a sense of place. The ignorance of locale creates a fear and a mysterious sense of claustrophobia. As the soldiers venture deeper into the snow covered landscape they no longer have a sense of where they are. The cold, disorienting effects of the Russian landscape echo the displacement and isolation they experience as soldiers.

Towards the end you don’t know where you’re standing anymore. Stalingrad as a place has become a scarred emotion that rests behind your eyes. Cold, and devoid of humanity, War dehumanizes all.

1.The Young Go Getter; who signed up to see the world. The Brooding Mad Man, who spends most of his time quietly contemplating the hell he’s seen and is going to make the enemy pay for it. The Everyman, a guy caught up in the chaos and horrors of war and all he want to do is go home. The squeamish guy who is either incompetent in a sympathetic way or is detestable by for his weaknesses, and on and on. A lot of these paradigms can also be found in horror films, which in notable ways influence war films of a kind.

2.A relative term, considering that you never really see more than fifteen to twenty actors on screen at a time, and it seems implied that while these are minor skirmishes, the Russian force is greater in scale to the German army’s.