Estado de São Paulo
February 8, 2001
By Luiz Carlos Merten

After a disappointing opening on Wednesday with the showing of Jean-Jacques Annaud's big production "Enemy of the Gates," the Berlin festival recovers with Steven Soderbergh's excellent "Traffic."

"Enemy" cost $90 million and it is esthetically poor. However, during the press interview Annaud posed like a famous director. Even though he is the author, he just played a supportive role for Jude Law, who, along with Joseph Fiennes, plays one of the two important roles in the movie. Joseph didn't show up in Berlin. Ed Harris didn't come either. Sitting on the table were Annaud, Bob Hoskins, who played Kruschev, Rachel Weisz, and, of course, Jude Law, who delighted the journalists.

They don't make festivals like in the good old times anymore. The room was filled with fans of the star. He thought it was fun at first, but then he started feeling uncomfortable after a journalist cynically inverted what would have been a normal question during a festival. The journalist wanted Annaud to say how it felt to work with Jude. The director wasn't important anymore, only the star. To better understand this, just watch Woody Allen's "Celebrities," that just came out on DVD.

"Enemy" is about the battle of Stalingrad, which was decisive during the Second World War. The Italian master Sergio Leone dreamt with a war epic about the same subject. He died without being able to raise the fortune that Annaud now wasted. The beginning of the movie suggests a thematic park just like that of Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan." Annaud wanted to make his own Normandy invasion. He shows it using several soviet soldiers who face hell in Stalingrad under a Natzi attack.

This is the best scene, less for the especial effects than for a single detail. Annaud places the camera right against Jude Law's face. And follows it when he leaves the boat where the soldiers are being transported and then stops, his face disturbed. The audience tries to imagine for a moment what is causing him so much stupor. The camera moves and finally unveils what Vassilli, the character's name, is seeing. It is the kind of scene that a director can only make when dealing with an actor such as Jude Law.

In the movie, the Red Army is being defeated. Joseph Fiennes plays a journalist. He writes war news for the soldiers at a newspaper. He sees when Vassili kills five German officers with perfect shots. He proposes to Kruchev to make Vassili a symbol of the new socialist man, an inspiration to raise the soldier's moral. Vassili becomes a hero, but then Ed Harris comes in the picture as a German general who follows him implacably.

Although the movie is European, made predominately with European's funds, shot in Babelsberg, a studio near Berlin, "Enemy" is pure Hollywood. The siege and battle of Stallingrad are reduced to a duel between two madmen, a Russian superman and a Natzi. Everybody wanted to know how he (Annaud) thinks the American audience will react to an epic with Russians heroes. He said he hopes they will react well. He made the movie convinced that he was telling a great story, with great personages. It could have been indeed a great movie, if Leone had been the director. But not with the poor dialogues that Annaud himself wrote.