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There's the Enemy at the Gates !

Like the Westerns, war movies are also scarce phenomenon in today's Hollywood. But with the award-winner and box-office hit, Saving Private Ryan, Hollywood is gingerly coming forward to produce war epics.

If the $80 million, Enemy at the Gates becomes a hit, surely more producers were inclined to emulate its example. The movie is based on the story of real-life hero Vassili Zaitsev, whose exploits at Stalingrad form one of the most famous and thrilling sagas to emerge from World War II.

Zaitsev (Jude Law) is a celebrated Russian sniper who stalks his enemies one man at a time. But his fame soon thrusts him into a duel with the awesome Nazi sharpshooter, Major Konig (Ed Harris). Soon, the two men are caught in an intense personal war.

Zaitsev's exploits bring him to the attention of Soviet officer Danilov (Joseph Fiennes) who uses Zaitsev's heroism to make him a national idol. Another personal war breaks out when both men fall in love with the same woman.

Zaitsev and Konig are bent on tracking down and killing each other. With great patience, skill and determination, each man stalks the other while thousands of men are dying all around them in the rubble of Stalingrad.

In Vassili Zaitsev, director Jean-Jacques Annaud, saw a tragic hero who was used up by the Communist regime. "Vassili," says Annaud, "was the perfect hero. He became a focus of propaganda and was said to have fallen in love with a female soldier in his division. The character of Konig, the German sharpshooter, is also heavily described in the Russian propaganda, although we found no documentation in Germany."

"We have taken a historical event and tried to understand what happened in the hearts of people who lived through it," Annaud says. "We know about some of these characters from the archives and newsreel footage; the rest is open to interpretation. This is what made this story so fascinating and appealing.

Enemy at the Gates is a film about duels and duality, about contrasts and extremes. The event is miniscule, but the propaganda makes it extremely important. Two individuals track each other in the midst of millions who are dying, but the focus is on these two," he adds.

"The smallest part is only one little piece of the large canvas, but it consequently becomes the central symbol of the whole. A major element of Enemy at the Gates is the love story between Vassili and Tania, a female soldier played by Rachel Weisz, and the resulting jealousy felt by Danilov. The character is based on a real Tania, who fought as a soldier at Stalingrad and did, in fact, fall in love with Vassili.

Jude Law, one of the rising stars in Hollywood, was attracted to the movie project because of the complexities it dealt with. "This film is really about men being used as pawns," he says in the production notes. "So many men died in so many nasty situations in this siege, and it points out not only the scale of the war, but the loss of human life at the most personal level."

Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) is the manipulating Russian officer, Danilov. "Danilov lives very much in his head and in his books," says Fiennes. "It's a lesson to us all to get involved in reality and not just observe life, to actually live and breathe it. This is one of the downfalls and tragedies of Danilov and was an aspect I was drawn to.

"The epic scale of the story is very much the backdrop to a far more intimate tale..."

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