What do you think of Stalingrad?

The Battle of Stalingrad is undoubtedly one of the most grand and tragic battles in the whole World War II and even in human history. Together with Midway Island and Alaman, it not only constituted an important turning point in World War II, but also was remembered by the world for its huge casualties and destruction, desperate attacks and brutal killings. The war that lasted for a year crushed the huge city into powder, and the two sides fought to the death in almost every inch of land. The average survival rate of the Red Army is no more than 24 hours, while the Germans lose more than 2,000 soldiers every day. The battle eventually caused nearly 2 million casualties, achieved great victory, and also cast a tragic failure. Those fresh and fragile lives, in the face of seemingly vast history, eventually become empty numbers and notes.

There is no need for literary description, and nature is a hotbed of drama. Russia or the Soviet Union put Stalingrad on the big screen countless times, of which 1948 was a political product, and even Stalin himself participated in the post-editing. Germany also described the war from the perspective of losers. The domestic audience is most familiar with Enemy at the Gates 200 1 starring Jude Nuo. But when it comes to film and television development, Stalingrad lags far behind Midway Island, Pearl Harbor or Normandy, which is partly related to the decline of Russian cultural creativity with the economic downturn after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Just as the full moon is poor, Russian films that have experienced the bottom are reborn in the context of economic revival. In 2004, "The Night's Watch" revived the international prestige of Russian commercial films, and timur bekmambetov also entered Hollywood and made a wonderful film that made the world shine. This time, Russian director Odor Bundachuk received a $30 million investment from Sony Pictures, and finally had a chance to make the theme of "Battle of Stalingrad" glow with new brilliance. As far as the movie war is concerned, the investment level of $30 million can only be patched up in Hollywood, at most, it is handled by close-up or montage. Even in China, this is only such a level. However, Odor did use these funds to create a very grand war scene and a fairly good level of special effects.

Like all mainstream war movies, Stalingrad also chose the way of "seeing the big from the small" to describe the war. A team of advance scouts sneaked into the city center occupied by Germany, occupied a strategic place, and confronted the Germans close at hand. Since then, scattered soldiers have joined the defense one after another, and the Germans have launched attacks many times, and the two sides will not give in to each other. In this process, the mode of confrontation between the enemy and ourselves was established. Coupled with a beautiful woman living alone in a lonely building, mixed with ambiguous feelings with six soldiers, the whole plot structure of Stalingrad is formed.

Such a plot obviously draws lessons from the story of "Pavlov Building" in Stalingrad. In the Battle of Stalingrad, a small unit under the command of Jankov Pavlov occupied an apartment in the center of the city and stubbornly resisted the Germans who were several times his own. At the most stalemate stage of the war, this building even became the spiritual fortress of the Soviet Union against Germany. The Red Army in the building repelled numerous German attacks, and the German group that stuck to Stalingrad was eliminated.

Such an inspirational story is undoubtedly the best blueprint for Hollywood-style war heroes. However, the final effect of the film is not as good as expected, whether it is the constraint of production funds or the director's improper narration. Such a theme and the background of Russian production are obviously not the female audience with literary orientation that the film wants to mobilize. In the narration of the movie Stalingrad, there are several key words that attract men most: World War II, Russia, the fighting nation, and the Battle of Stalingrad. Despite the gimmicks of IMAX3D, it is obvious that rough, direct and crisp shots can better satisfy men who want to see fierce and real battle scenes. The opening of the film really gave the audience enough excitement. After the failure of the night attack, the burning Red Army soldiers rushed out from the horizon, and they rushed to the German defense line with distorted expressions and growls. In the lens of high-speed photography, the most cruel pictures are expressed in a poetic way. This is the foreshadowing of the whole story, and it is also doomed to failure in advance. But that's all the surprises this movie can give people. In the space of two hours, too much time was spent describing the state of the characters and those trivial emotions. The men of the fighting nation seem to be gossips, and the rambling dialogue and dereliction of duty translation almost make me doubt the real motives of the characters half the time. It seems that the two warring sides should have fought to the death, but they just wanted to go up and fight on a whim. More often, they are willing to talk about life, pick up girls, or enjoy seemingly awkward but lazy leisure time in various ways that conform to their own national culture.

After the big scene of plane shooting, the whole narrative environment of the film is almost stuck in a limited square for a week. A large number of indoor scenes must also be limited by the budget. It's really expensive to build one-on-one scenes, so the movie will be made into a larger-scale scene theater. The director's abuse of slow motion is simply outrageous, which seems to be a strange existence in Russian commercial films. For example, shooting slow motion, stabbing slow motion, killing slow motion and even being killed are all slow motion. It is not rich enough in battle scenes, because it even has to be folded in half. On the one hand, these slow motions make the characters infinitely close to the epic heroes, but on the other hand, people's enthusiasm is dragged to the bottom by those slow movements and low drawling.

And the biggest problem with movies is not even here. The film used a lot of space to describe the dialogue between soldiers, even the strange love for villains, but in the end it failed to describe the characters of several main characters clearly. Telling the story of such an offensive and defensive war in a relatively closed space is a confession of the integrity of the plot. However, for most audiences, what they want to see is Stalingrad. The battle described in this film is of course part of the battle of Stalingrad, but most of the time, the story is out of the background of World War II and even has little to do with the battle of Stalingrad itself. The director didn't explain the strategic significance of being alone in the building clearly, and the explanation of the small pattern and the big background lacked depth. Fighting is divorced from fighting, and fighting has left the times. Soldiers seem to be overhead in another space, and sometimes even the reasons for fighting need voiceover to supplement. Finally, these soldiers even attributed their emotional outbursts to women. Such a small family pattern really makes people believe that it is a vision from the fighting nation. As far as the pattern is concerned, Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates and even the flying Taiji flag are better than too many.

Of course, objectively speaking, in terms of hard indicators, the production level of the Russian film industry has been quite excellent, and it has also become another overseas big ticket warehouse that can compete with the China market. Like China, Russia is also trying to effectively combine Hollywood's mature industrial system with local themes, and Russia has taken the lead in the richness and openness of themes. Of course, Stalingrad's problem is that it relies too much on patterned routines and loses its style. There is no need to shout out the doctrine, Russian filmmakers still have a long way to go, how to face the historical heritage, how to evaluate the influence of the Soviet Union, and how to make their voices known and accepted by more audiences in the world.