Stalingrad **
Dir: Fyodor
Bondarchuk. With: Mariya Smolnikova, Yanina Studilina, Pyotr Fedorov, Thomas
Kretschmann. 131 mins. Cert: 15
This long-haul,
Russian-language WW2 drama deploys a curious bookending device – involving
Russian rescue workers hauling Germans from the rubble of Fukushima – to frame
an equally bizarre main event: a part-recreation of the grimness of the siege of Stalingrad using
the same 3D we're more accustomed to from the likes of, say, The Lego Movie.
The perverse spectacle (child-torching, prostitute-stripping, endless flying
ash) offered as compensation for some indistinct characterisation gets muffled
by this format’s limited light capacity: those few scenes not choked with
self-importance instead succumb to a greyly macho fug of war. The subtext –
Russia endures, flexes muscles anew – doubtless makes it President Putin’s pick
of the week, but someone should really take him to see the Lego film.
Stalingrad opens in selected cinemas from today.
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