Enemy at the Gates

Enemy at the Gates
Film poster
Directed by	Jean-Jacques Annaud
Produced by	Jean-Jacques Annaud John D. Schofield
Written by	Jean-Jacques Annaud Alain Godard
Based on	Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad  by William Craig
Starring	Joseph Fiennes Rachel Weisz Jude Law Bob Hoskins Ed Harris Ron Perlman
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Robert Fraisse
Edited by	Noëlle Boisson Humphrey Dixon
Production company	Mandalay Pictures Repérage Films[1]
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	April 16, 2001 (2001-04-16)
Running time	131 minutes
Country	France[1] Germany United Kingdom Ireland United States
Language	English German Russian
Budget	$68,000,000[2]
Box office	$96,976,270[2]

Enemy at the Gates is a 2001 war film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud.

The film's title is taken from William Craig's 1973 nonfiction book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad, which describes the events surrounding the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/43.^[3] While fictional, the film is loosely based on war stories told by Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev.

Plot

In 1942, Vasily Zaytsev (Jude Law), a shepherd from the Ural Mountains who is now a soldier in the Red Army, finds himself on the front lines of the Battle of Stalingrad. Forced into a suicidal charge against the invading Germans by barrier troops, he uses impressive marksmanship skills—taught to him by his grandfather from a young age—to save himself and commisar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes). Nikita Khrushchev (Bob Hoskins) arrives in Stalingrad to coordinate the city's defences and demands ideas to improve morale. Danilov, now a Senior Lieutenant, suggests that the people need figures to idolize and give them hope, and publishes tales of Vasily's exploits in the army's newspaper that paint him as a national hero and propaganda icon. Vasily is transferred to the sniper division, and he and Danilov become friends. They also both become romantically interested in Tania (Rachel Weisz), a citizen of Stalingrad who has become a Private in the local militia. Danilov has her transferred to an intelligence unit away from the battlefield.

With the Soviet snipers taking an increasing toll on the German forces (by particularly seeking out officers), German Major Erwin König (Ed Harris) is deployed to Stalingrad to take out Vasily and thus crush Soviet morale. A renowned marksman and head of the German Army sniper school at Zossen, he lures Vasily into a trap and takes out two of his fellow snipers, but Vasily manages to escape. When the Red Army command learns of König's mission, they dispatch his former student Koulikov (Ron Perlman) to help Vasily kill him. König, however, outmaneuvers Kulikov and kills him with a very skillful shot, shaking Vasily's spirits considerably. Khrushchev pressures Danilov to bring the sniper standoff to a conclusion.

Sasha, a young Soviet boy, volunteers to act as a double agent by passing König false information about Vasily's whereabouts, thus giving Vasily a chance to ambush the Major. Vasily sets a trap for König and manages to wound him, but during a second attempt Vasily falls asleep after many hours and his sniper log is taken by a looting German soldier. The German command takes the log as evidence of Vasily's death and plans to send König home, but the Major does not believe that Vasily is dead. The commanding German general takes König's dog tags to prevent Russian propaganda from profiting if König is killed. König also gives the general a War Merit Cross that was posthumously awarded to König's son, who was a lieutenant in the 116th infantry division and was killed in the early days of the battle for Stalingrad. This reveals König's reason for volunteering for the mission. König tells Sasha where he will be next, suspecting that the boy will tell Vasily. Tania and Vasily have meanwhile fallen in love, and the jealous Danilov disparages Vasily in a letter to his superiors.

König spots Tania and Vasily waiting for him at his next ambush spot, confirming his suspicions about Sasha. He reluctantly kills the boy and hangs his body off a pole to bait Vasily. Vasily vows to kill König and sends Tania and Danilov to evacuate Sasha's mother (Eva Mattes) from the city, but Tania is wounded by shrapnel en route to the evacuation boats. Thinking her dead, Danilov regrets his jealousy of Vasily and his resulting disenchantment with the communist cause. Finding Vasily waiting to ambush König, Danilov intentionally exposes himself in order to provoke König into shooting him and exposing König's position. Thinking he has killed Vasily, König goes to inspect the body, but realizes too late that he has fallen into a trap and is in Vasily's sights. He turns to face Vasily, taking off his hat in a final gesture of respect, after which Vasily kills him. Two months later, after Stalingrad has been liberated and the German forces have surrendered, Vasily finds Tania recovering in a field hospital.

Main cast

Historical accuracy

Zaytsev was a senior sergeant of the 2nd Battalion, 1047th Rifle Regiment, 284th Tomsk Rifle Division. He was interviewed by Vasily Grossman during the battle, and the account of that interview, lightly fictionalized in his novel, Life and Fate (Part One, Chapter 55), is substantially the same as that shown in the movie, without putting a name to the German sniper with whom he dueled.

Historian Antony Beevor suggests in his book Stalingrad that, while Zaytsev was a real person, the story of his duel (dramatised in the film) with König is fictional. Although William Craig's book Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad includes a "sniper's duel" between Zaytsev and König, the sequence of events in the film is fictional. Zaytsev claimed in an interview to have engaged in a sniper duel over a number of days. Zaytsev, the only historical source for the story, stated that after killing the German sniper, and on collecting his tags, he found that he had killed the head of the Berlin Sniper School.^[4] No sniper named König has ever been identified in the German records.

In the film, Jude Law uses a 7.62x54r Mosin Model 1891/30 sniper rifle with a PU 3.5 power sniper scope (i.e. the image is magnified 3 and a half times). Vasily Zaytsev used a Model 1891/30 sniper rifle with an earlier and larger sniper telescope (his rifle is preserved in Stalingrad History Museum in Russia). Also, the poster for the film reverses the Mosin 91/30 rifle photograph so that the bolt handle appears on the left side of the rifle, instead of the right side where it should be.

The love story between Vasily and Tania has no basis in Zaytsev's memoirs.

Reception

Based on 137 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 54% approval rating from critics, with an average score of 5.7/10; the reviews were summarized as "Atmospheric and thrilling, Enemy at the Gates gets the look and feel of war right. However, the love story seems out of place."^[5] Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating in the 0–100 range based on reviews from top mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 53, based on 33 reviews.^[6]

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that it "is about two men placed in a situation where they have to try to use their intelligence and skills to kill each other. When Annaud focuses on that, the movie works with rare concentration. The additional plot stuff and the romance are kind of a shame".^[7] New York Magazine's Peter Ranier was less kind, declaring "It's as if an obsessed film nut had decided to collect every bad war-film convention on one computer and program it to spit out a script."^[8] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone admitted the film had faults, but that "any flaws in execution pale against those moments when the film brings history to vital life."^[9]

The film was poorly received in the former Soviet Union.^[10] Some Red Army Stalingrad veterans were so offended by inaccuracies in the film and how the Red Army was portrayed that on 7 May 2001, shortly after the film premiered in Russia, they expressed their displeasure in the Duma, demanding a ban of the film, but their request was not granted.^[11][12]

The film was received poorly in Germany. Critics claimed that it simplified history and glorified war.^[13][14][15] At the Berlinale film festival, it was booed. Annaud stated afterwards that he would not present another film at Berlinale, calling it a "slaughterhouse" and claiming that his film received much better reception elsewhere.^[16][17]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack to Enemy at the Gates was released on March 13, 2001.

No.	Title	Artist	Length
1.	"The River Crossing to Stalingrad"	James Horner	15:13
2.	"The Hunter Becomes the Hunted"	James Horner	5:53
3.	"Vassili's Fame Spreads"	James Horner	3:40
4.	"Koulikov"	James Horner	5:13
5.	"The Dream"	James Horner	2:35
6.	"Bitter News"	James Horner	2:38
7.	"The Tractor Factory"	James Horner	6:43
8.	"A Sniper's War"	James Horner	3:25
9.	"Sacha's Risk"	James Horner	5:37
10.	"Betrayal"	James Horner	11:28
11.	"Danilov's Confession"	James Horner	7:13
12.	"Tania (End Credits)"	James Horner	6:53
Total length:			76:31[18]

Notes

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Enemy at the Gates

• Enemy at the Gates at the Internet Movie Database
• Enemy at the Gates at the British Film Institute's Film and TV Database
• Enemy at the Gates at AllMovie
• Enemy at the Gates at Rotten Tomatoes
• Enemy at the Gates at Metacritic
• Enemy at the Gates at Box Office Mojo
• Enemy at the Gates Reviewed by David R. Stone, History Department, Kansas State University, published by H-War (June, 2002)
• Enema at The Gates: A Foreigner Will Not Notice, a Russian Will Not Forgive Reviewed by Valeri Potapov

Films directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud Black and White in Color (1976) Hot Head (1979) Quest for Fire (1981) The Name of the Rose (1986) The Bear (1988) The Lover (1992) Wings of Courage (1995) Seven Years in Tibet (1997) Enemy at the Gates (2001) Two Brothers (2004) His Majesty Minor (2007) Day of the Falcon (2011) Wolf Totem (2015)