Stalingrad has all of these things, and I get the feeling that it set out to put itself squarely in the epic genre. I watched it in 3D and it was an enormous experience, filling my living room with huge explosions and flying shrapnel. Home 3D is brilliant for spectacle – although I wish spectacle didn’t always have to be the overriding factor. The score, which sweeps appropriately, was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, and it is one of many elements of the film that ended up having the opposite effect on me than the intended one. Instead of dragging me into the story I felt distanced from it, and the 3D added to this. When a film becomes a spectacle it’s difficult to do anything other than sit back and marvel at it. “Look at that!” I thought, as shrapnel went whizzing past the end of my nose and the music swelled up again. The action was always ‘that’ rather than ‘this’. Everything from the poses of the characters to the piles of rubble were arranged so artfully, and for maximum visual effect, that ultimately it felt like an empty experience for the eyes alone. There aren’t many epic films that solve this problem, for me. The bigger the spectacle, the less involved I feel, from Titanic to Independence Day. But there were some well-handled emotional moments, such as the Russian soldiers organising a party for their mutual object of affection, Katya (a strong performance by Mariya Smolnikova). They present her with small objects and arrange treats for her, and even though their devotion felt unbelievable, I wonder if that has more to do with how US films have often portrayed Russian soldiers in the past. With Stalingrad as the subject, and knowing this was a Russian film, I was expecting some serious brutality that didn’t really materialise. The more I think about it, the more interesting that element of the film becomes. Stalingrad does contain good things, then, but you have to hunt for them amongst the special effects. Or maybe watch it purely for the fact that it is certainly epic, or to have a think about the way Russian film is choosing to depict its own history. But on an emotional level I found it far from involving. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
