Where The Hell Was The Battle??

I think the Soviet movie Stalingrad (1989) might be for you - a lot of boring emotionless battle scenes and virtually no character development or anything close to humans.

Just like in Das Boot, the director's intentions are not to depict the battle itself but to show the reactions of each soldier whatever its grade during the battle.

And he has succeeded perfectly to give us these impressions. At first the guys are proud to go to the front, they are driven by the Nazi propaganda which is clearly expressed at the beginning of the movie when during the decorations ceremony the officer has the nerve to say that El Alamein was a German victory when in fact that was a major failure thank god! AT the time I was living with my parents in Cairo and I can tell you that we were scared to death with the idea of what would happen if Rommel succeeded to invade Egypt!

The second moment is when before going to combat the officer tells the guys they are to defend Christian values.

When Hanz observes the attitude towards the Russian prisoner, he begins to realize there are abnormal behaviors in the army.
When during the short ceasefire, they listen to Hitler's speech and then they realize fully that from the beginning the regime has been lying to them then their moral begins to vacillate.

When conditions get worse and worse they have no more reasons to stay alive and that leads us to the final scenes.

Watch on youtube the documentaries done with survivors of the German army and then you'll understand what a great movie this is; Vilsmaier has perfectly transcribed what all the interviewed survivors among the 5000 who came back out of 100000 prisoners, felt and still feel; the huge horror of their situation with high ranked officers living in comfortable headquarters, having food and alcohols while the soldiers were freezing to death and starving. It is proven today that some were driven to cannibalism! This movie is a masterpiece and thank god it has not indulged in the usual stupid happy ending hollywoodian movie with history corrupted.

The film is directly aimed at people who have larger attention spans than that of a goat.

The film depicts places we've been reading about for a long time

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Just watch Saving Private Ryan or any other fantasy for that matter.

Loads of tanks? There were very few German tanks at Stalingrad. And it's a better movie than that fantasy piece of *beep* Enemy at the Gates.

For the most part, it wasn't a battle of tanks and trenches.

noone in their right minds attack cities with tanks. And the war was depicted - pocket resistance fighting and attrition was how soviets held Stalingrad.

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Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.