Another rape of history

There's no real interest in making films about the eastern front that portray it as it was. Most people are happy to buy into the myth that Europe was liberated by the western allies and completely overlook the Soviet contribution to WWII.
Unfortunately these people are also Hollywood's customers, so there's little profit to be made in making a film that portrays the Soviets in a favourable light, particularly since the US spent so long convincing its population that the USSR was the work of Satan.

Maybe you should check out "Brestskaya krepost" (aka Fortress of War/Brest Fortress) which details the 9 days defense of the fortress at, you guessed it, Brest at the outbreak of Barbarossa in June 1941.

Unsurprisingly it's a Russian (or Belarussian) production. This is the only "modern" film I know of that realistically portrays the sheer brutality on the Eastern Front.

"Defiance" wasn't bad, but in the end full of your typical Hollywood cliches, but there are two oldish Soviet movies that tell the partisans' story, "Voskhozhdeniye" (aka The Ascent) which deals with collaboration and betrayal, and perhaps more notably Elem Klimov's last ever film "Idi I Smotri" aka Come and See; the latter is by far the most savagely brutal and sickeningly nauseating WWII movie ever made. A must see for anyone interested in the most murderous and horrific savagery ever committed by mankind.

So I suppose the whole story about the two children starving and the mother being forced to choose one to favour and one to neglect just so that one of them will survive -- that's not related to the siege at all, right? That's just stupid Hollywood fluff. And neither is the actress selling all her personal belongings to buy food on the black market. After all she's an actress! There were no glamourous opera singers in Leningrad, what a contrivance!

True, the movie focuses a lot on the Englishwoman, but I see that as an opportunity for the Russian filmmaker to take a jab at the NKVD and the Soviet culture. At the end, when the one officer says "our real enemy is approaching Moscow and strangling Leningrad, and here we are as usual playing this stupid games!" - that served an important thematic purpose.

Oftentimes I don't understand why imdb.com posters bother to watch movies. They just get their undies twisted into knots over inaccuracies and the fact that in a movie you need drama; you need individuals with whom the audience can identify. You need a protagonist, an antagonist or two, and a plot that holds the interest of the audience.

Clearly, most of the posters here have no interest in the actual telling of a story through cinema. So please, watch only documentaries. Believe me, you'll be much happier.

you and I clearly didn't watch the same movie

the one I saw had very little of England in it, and had extended shots of people dying in the streets, cutting flesh off of a live horse, cannibalizing dead humans, etc.


Surreal Cinema: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls006574276/

Enemy at the gates was about as accurate as you can expect a cinematic portrayal and not a documentary to be. The guns were Makarovs and Nagants. The Soviets did use brutal human wave tactics and there was a lot of backstabbing between the military and the intelligence people. (Same as the Nazi in that regard).
Some of the uniforms, planes and guns weren't exactly right on the German side IIRC. That movie had a story arc, compelling characters and well, a plot.

Leningrad had some very compelling visuals, and some good parts here and there. But overall it was a poor movie with a disjointed story that meanders.I felt like I was watching a very good Hong Kong movie sometimes! It is unfortunate that it takes as it's topic such a grave event of WWII.

I haven't seen the movie but I can bet the mortgage on one thing .... The movie made no mention of a GREATER brutal event in the history of mankind .... Stalin's starving to death of 20 million Ukrainians only a decade prior to the siege of Leningrad. BTW, I even read that Stalin practically supported the siege due to his growing paranoia that the Mayor of Leningrad was on the outs with him.