Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Attack on Leningrad Blu-ray Movie Review

This is one siege you may not be able to sit through.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 6, 2012

If the Russians didn’t exactly invent the propaganda film, they certainly raised it to heretofore unknown heights of persuasiveness and artistry, as evidenced by the works of Eisenstein if no other Soviet filmmaker. Still, one’s breath catches just for a moment when the opening credits of Attack on Leningrad roll by and we see that the film was produced with the collaboration of the Russian Ministry of Culture. Certainly the siege of Leningrad is one of the most tragic and emotionally devastating stories of World War II, and is ripe for a filmic adaptation, and probably indeed even a bit of nationalistic, flag waving propaganda to boot. What’s so patently odd about this internationally cast but Russian filmed outing, then, is how cavalier the film is about history and how actually surprisingly dismissive it is of the Soviet government’s own handling of the Leningrad “situation.” It’s commendable in a way that Russian freedoms have evolved to the point where a filmmaker doesn’t have to toe the (literal) Party line in order to see his work actually make it to the screen, and so Attack on Leningrad’s rather fair minded approach to both Russian and German malfeasance during the siege is laudatory. But the wholesale slaughter of historical accuracy and dramatic continuity are other matters entirely. The film features a really interesting and impressive cast and some incredibly well shot set pieces and it attempts (rather fitfully) to instill some personal connection to what is still an epic saga, but with some of the shoddiest ADR in recent memory and a rather haphazard tone and inconsistent acting styles, Attack on Leningrad feels like a little bit of a siege itself.

There’s precious little information available about Attack on Leningrad online, though judging from the Making of featurette included on the Blu-ray, it appears quite likely that the film was originally released in Russia under the simpler title Leningrad, perhaps a recognition that Russians would immediately intuit the subject matter and setting. However, one has to wonder if the original Russian version (if indeed there was an original Russian version) was considerably longer, for Attack on Leningrad often feels oddly edited and assembled, lurching from anecdote to anecdote. It’s almost as if the gigantic Soviet version of War and Peace directed by Sergei Bondarchuk had been whittled down to an hour and half: there’s bound to be some logic missing.

The basic hook of Attack on Leningrad, at least for Western (meaning non-Russian) audiences, is the character of Kate (Mira Sorvino), a British journalist who finagles her way into covering the siege of Leningrad and then ends up getting stranded there, discovering first hand the horrors that native Russians are going through. Her boyfriend and mentor Phillip Parker (Gabriel Byrne), who has also come to Leningrad, is led to believe Kate has perished in a German attack on the outskirts of the city, and leaves on the only plane ferrying journalists out of the beleaguered metropolis. Kate is helped by a well meaning Soviet policewoman named Nina Tsvetkova (Olga Sutulova), who rescues Kate and deposits her in Kate’s sprawling quasi-Baroque apartment house, where Kate rooms with a crippled youngster named Yura (Vadim Loginov) and later meets a friend of Yura’s, a young girl named Sima (Janna Nesterenko).

Playing out against this central plot are frequent cutaways to the German strategy of starving Leningrad to defeat, since a straight on military attack doesn’t seem feasible. That brings in the character of General Von Leeb (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who attends weirdly scientific meetings with Hitler and a coterie of nutritionists who go over the human body’s daily need for 2000 calories, how much food is left in Leningrad, and how long it will take the population there to starve. The Germans seem almost humorously annoyed at the “stubbornness” of the Russians in refusing to just die quickly. Meanwhile, the Russians themselves find increasingly sparse rations announced by the Soviet government over feeble radio waves, and a somewhat vicious black market arises for those who can pawn off various luxury items in trade for some much needed food.

Attack on Leningrad has all the elements of what really should have been a blockbuster. Despite the fact that in all reality the contributions of Mueller-Stahl and especially Byrne amount to little more than cameos, there’s a sweep to the story which director Alexander Buravsky ably captures with a series of devastating images portraying the death and destruction which were daily occurrences in Leningrad. (And a note to those who are faint of heart of squeamish of stomach: this film is filled with a number of fairly disturbingly graphic sequences). And the story of Kate is at its core touching and actually does lead to some emotional heft in the film’s final act. But what hobbles this film is its almost cavalier attitude toward some of the events and the characters’ various reactions to them, as well as a dubbing job that can only be deemed ridiculously poor.

In the first instance, we have a number of really weird illogical moments throughout the film, including sudden changes of heart by Mueller-Stahl’s character with regard to how “noble” (or not) the Russian people are, and, later, a really weird interlude (which is recapped over the closing credits) where Kate and Nina forget their troubles and “get happy” (to paraphrase that old Arlen song Judy Garland made famous), dancing about their rotting apartment in their skivvies while the world goes to hell. But ultimately all of this might have been salvageable, especially considering the film’s quite appreciable visual sweep, if it had not been for the horrible dubbing job. This is a multi-lingual film (see the Audio section below for more details—our specs above only allow for one language to be displayed at a time, and that’s slightly misleading with regard to this film). Obviously the Russians spoke in Russian, the Germans in German, and the Americans (and/or Europeans) spoke in English, but it appears that just about everyone was post-looped, and to say that lips don’t exactly match soundtrack is something of an understatement. It’s so distracting after a while that it completely deflates whatever dramatic impact the film is attempting to generate otherwise.

Attack on Leningrad Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Attack on Leningrad Is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The film exists in two fairly radically different image worlds, so to speak. The German scenes are bright and colorful, with nice saturation, excellent fine detail and crisp and appealing contrast and solid black levels. The Leningrad sequences, on the other hand, have been purposefully desaturated almost to the point of becoming monochromatic and they are also filtered oddly at times, which gives the overall look of these segments (which are after all the vast bulk of the film) a fuzzy soft, overly grainy appearance which suffers from a lack of fine detail and is especially prone to crush in the darker scenes. This was obviously done intentionally to highlight (no ironic pun intended) the shortages and suffering of the people of Leningrad, so from an artistic choice perspective it's completely understandable, but when thrust up against the really sharp and detailed looking German scenes, the rest of the film literally pales by comparison.

Attack on Leningrad Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As mentioned above in the main body of the review, our specs, which allow for listing only one language at a time, is a bit misleading with regard to this title. The main audio option, presented via a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, is in a combination of Russian, German and English. I listed it as Russian because that's how it's listed on the menu and the audio codecs display on the PS3. Russians speak Russian, Germans speak German and the Americans and other English speakers speak English. There is a frightfully bad English dub presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 that really should be avoided at all costs. Yes, it's in English, but it presents the Russians speaking with faux Russian accents (lots of rolled "R"'s) and Germans speaking with faux German accents. There has been some appallingly bad dubbing done on this movie whatever the choice is. While the lip movements match the Russian and German language sequences at least relatively well on the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, it's as if Sorvino and Byrne's ADR sessions were done via telephone where they weren't able to see themselves on screen. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that's truly how bad their voices synch up to their lip movements. It's almost embarrassingly bad at times. If you can get past that major distraction (something frankly I couldn't), the rest of the DTS mix is really quite good, with some excellent immersion in the battle scenes, full bodied fidelity and some fantastic LFE in a number of segments featuring gunfire or explosions.

Attack on Leningrad Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Leningrad (SD; 38:39) features quite a bit of footage showing shots being set up and filmed interspersed with interviews with a number of the cast and crew, including director Alexander Buravsky.
• Interview with Director Alexander Buravsky (SD; 13:29) features completely different material than the interview segments including in the Making Of featurette, and in fact Buravsky speaks English in this outing, giving some background on the project as well as the history involved.
• Trailer (SD; 1:56)

Attack on Leningrad Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are the makings of a spectacular film in Attack on Leningrad. Many of the elements are there, including an excellent cast, beautiful production design and an impressive flair for staging by the director. But something went pretty seriously awry somewhere along the way. Whether there's an original version of this out there somewhere that's longer and make a bit more sense is a question I'd love an answer to (if any enterprising reader knows, let me know, please). The story of the siege of Leningrad certainly deserves to be told and be known more in depth by the world at large, as it obviously is by the Russian people. There are simply a number of hurdles which must be overcome to be able to tolerate Attack on Leningrad, not the least of which is about the shoddiest dubbing job I personally can recall. If you're a patient soul and can overlook a number of issues, there's the kernel of a really moving film here.