Stalingrad, Reenacting the Historical Battle Like a Trauma in Order to Produce a Coherent Past That Will Serve of Use for Their Respective Presents
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
national idea in popular culture surrounding Stalingrad, reenacting the historical battle like a trauma in order to produce a coherent past that will serve of use for their respective presents. In this light, Fedor Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad is no exception. Bondarchuk’s film resurrects Stalingrad for a new generation of cinema-goers, simultaneously claiming the Soviet past for Putin’s Russia while ushering the myth into the style and tropes of international blockbuster action films: high-contrasted color schemes, marbled computer animation, and Stalingrad frequent plays on perspective accompanied by [Сталинград] IMAX-3D parlor tricks. The result is a visually impressive film that aims to refashion a particular Russia, 2013 historical patriotism in the service of Color, 131 minutes contemporary Russian cultural politics. Russian, German, and Japanese with English Stalingrad is perhaps most subtitles unconventional in its framing device. Bookending Director: Fedor Bondarchuk the film is the story of Russian emergency Screenplay: Il'ia Til'kin, Sergei Snezhkin workers rescuing Germans in Japan during the Camera: Maksim Osadchii 2011 earthquake that ultimately led to the nuclear Music: Angelo Badalamenti meltdown at Fukushima. The Russian rescue Cast: Maria Smolnikova, Petr Fedorov, worker tells the story of Stalingrad in order to Dmitrii Lysenkov, Aleksei Barabash, calm the German victim (a strange topic to choose Andrei Smoliakov, Sergei Bondarchuk Jr., in retrospect). The choice of framing serves two Ianina Studilina, Thomas Kretschmann, purposes: it passes the torch of honor from the Heiner Lauterbach heroes of Stalingrad to those of contemporary Producers: Aleksandr Rodnianskii, Dmitrii Russia, and it foreshadows the eventual Rudovskii, Sergei Melkumov, Natal’ia reconciliation between Russian and German Gorina, Steve Schklair people after the war. The camaraderie between Production: Art Pictures Group, Non-Stop the Russian rescuer and the German victim is Production crucial for Stalingrad. If the film at its worst plays with historical fact to indulge its cultural fantasies, It is well known that Stalingrad, both the at its best Stalingrad provides an account of both battle and the city, occupy a deeply cherished German and Russian troops during the battle, place in the Russo-Soviet historical imaginary. thereby confusing the facile “us” versus “them” Through its mythologization as the turning point mentality of most depictions of Stalingrad. of the Second World War and the symbolic The main plot itself is relatively benign: linchpin of Soviet endurance and prowess, the while fighting the German forces on the ground in Battle of Stalingrad has been the recipient of Stalingrad, five Soviet soldiers find themselves numerous cultural depictions almost immediately bunking with Katia (Maria Smolnikova), the sole since its conclusion some seventy odd years ago. survivor of the house they have chosen to defend Important instantiations of the myth include as command central. Austere and honorable Fridrikh Ermler’s The Turning Point (Velikii Captain Gromov (Petr Fedorov) leads the group; perelom, 1945), Vladimir Petrov’s Battle of jokester Chvanov (Dmitrii Lysenkov) provides Stalingrad (Stalingradskaia bitva, 1949), Iurii comic relief; the older and war-weary Poliakov Ozerov’s Stalingrad (1989), and, more recently, (Andrei Smoliakov) mentors the group as a father Sergei Ursuliak’s 2012-2013 television adaptation figure; the fighter Nikiforov (Aleksei Barabash) of Vasilii Grossman’s novel Life and Fate (Zhizn' reveals his softer past as an opera singer; lastly, i sud'ba, 1950-59). These works help buffer a Astakhov (Bondarchuk, Jr.) stands at the end of the pecking order, a sissy (“tiutia”) with something to prove. The group forms a kind of the woman whose life has otherwise been clumsy family symbolic of the Russian state, with destroyed by his presence in her city. The Katia elevated amongst the soldiers to idol relatively balanced depiction of the battle will worship, an easy proxy for the eternally feminine eventually collapse, however, into the larger Russian soul. To make things stranger, the rescue ideological stakes of the film: the moral worker from the frame narrative describes this superiority of the Soviet people over their German group as his five fathers and mother. While not enemies just as the Russian worker rescues the quite as in Maksim Gor'kii’s story “Twenty Six Germans underground in Japan, thereby and One,” Katia is simultaneously revered and reminding the viewer of the legacy of Stalingrad. denigrated. She is sexualized, the subject of rude With the recent announcement that sexual comments, and sacralized, her purity Volgograd will now revert to Stalingrad for nine reiterating the Russian soldiers’ need to bear arms days a year, the mythic status of Stalingrad has and defend the motherland. The ambivalence of successfully been resuscitated for Putin’s Russia. Katia’s position amongst the soldiers belays her Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad is but one small, showy role in cementing the camp’s general homosocial step toward this Soviet reclamation. While the bonding. film did less well than hoped internationally, The setting of Stalingrad largely within a Stalingrad posted the largest opening weekend single house echoes the well-known fable of ever in domestic cinemas, bringing in $14.3m at “Pavlov’s House” at Stalingrad: during the battle, the Russian box office. The numbers seem to several Soviet soldiers successfully defended a suggest a domestic audience eager to relive its strategically located home from German invaders, glory days, history notwithstanding. thereby securing a strategically vital point on the banks of the Volga river. Several early scenes, in Trevor Wilson which the Russians fight to claim the house from the Germans, are reminiscent of Petrov’s 1949 The son of film director Sergei Bondarchuk, take on the subject, with the camera rising and Fedor Bondarchuk was born in Moscow in 1967 falling on a vivisected house as soldiers in battle and is a 1991 graduate of the State Institute for rush up and down flights of stairs. Another clear Filmmaking (VGIK). His film career began early intertext is House 6/1 in Grossman’s Life and with several small acting roles, including roles in Fate; Bondarchuk admits to mining the novel for his father’s Boris Godunov (1986) and as a sniper several key plot points in the film, and the defense in Stalingrad (1989) by Iurii Ozerov, his of a home by a handful of Soviet soldiers plays a instructor at VGIK. He made his career crucial role in Grossman’s retelling. This spatial producing several music videos throughout the device provides the narrative with a narrow scope 1990s for numerous Russian performers such as in order to emphasize the close quarters of the city Alla Pugacheva and Boris Grebenshchikov, battle rather than its more epic proportions. eventually winning an Ovation award for his work The sustained attention to private motives in the field. Although he has acted in many films and individual lives in the film mark a clear throughout his career and worked on numerous departure from its predecessors. Although smaller projects, Bondarchuk began his feature- Stalingrad possesses the special effects and length directorial début with The 9th Company thematic girth to produce a story of epic and has since developed a career built upon the proportions, Bondarchuk has opted for a more large-scale production of expensive blockbusters. intimate film. The film of course does not pronounce any profound truths on the military or Selected Filmography the experience of serving, but it does complicate the interactions of German troops with both the 2013 Stalingrad Soviet army and the residents of Stalingrad. The 2012 Nowhere to Hurry main representative of the German camp, Captain 2009 The Inhabited Island: Skirmish Kahn (Thomas Kretschmann) struggles to make 2008 The Inhabited Island sense of his service in the invader’s army while he 2006 The Quiet Don (television) develops feelings for his Russian concubine, 2005 The 9th Company Masha (Ianina Studilina). The film incurs 1989 Dream in a Summer Morning (short) momentary sympathy when Kahn seeks to help .