Das Boot (1981)

Directed by: Wolfgang Peterson

Starring: Jürgen Prochnow

*****

Its been a while since I've been as glued to a movie as I was Das Boot. Had the running time not exceeded three and a half hours, I'm certain life would not have gotten in the way and I'd have been able to sit and watch it start to finish, probably a couple times.  No matter though. Das Boot has the intensity, the entertainment value and the quality of filmmaking to sustain any type of viewing.  I was continuously able to pick up where I left off and feel just as claustrophobic, frightened and involved as any character in the film. These are the qualities of one of the best movies I've ever seen.

While Das Boot is not necessarily the greatest movie I've ever seen, it is perhaps the greatest made movie I've ever seen. As I watched and knowing what I do about filmmaking, I was able to recognize the patience and the discipline displayed by Peterson. So often, within the confines of U-96, a German submarine, I was forced to know only what the characters knew. As an audience member, its very difficult to not expect the magic of movies to allow me to see both sides of a battle, to see what was happening on the surface of the water while the characters waited in fear below. Peterson doesn't give us this. In fact the closest we ever get to the outside of the submarine while its under water is seeing the exploding depth charges threatening the life of the boat's crew.  The only thing that the characters in this film feel that the audience doesn't is their own physical pain. I was 100% involved in everything else. Its masterful filmmaking.

Jürgen Prochnow is the veteran Captain of U-96.  Its his leadership that guides his 42 man crew off to fight a war that really means very little to them. They are all there to do their duty but aren't necessarily fighting for anyone or anything but their survival. This is somewhat of an irrelevant plot point but it is part of what makes this movie so great. Its not about what war they are fighting or about which side they are on. In the context of this movie, they are just people, young, ordinary men put into extraordinary circumstances. Its the same approach that movies like Black Hawk Down use but without the glorified aspects. There are no uniforms and flags forcing the audience to pick sides. We hope for the crews survival because they are the films protagonists, not because they are the good guys and the British destroyers are the bad guys. My comparisons are in no way intended to discredit a movie like Black Hawk Down, only to describe in detail what makes Das Boot work as well as it does. The film is everything I wanted There Will be Blood to be. What that film turned out as was great in its own right, but what I expected was a movie so dialed in to everything surrounding just one thing, the consequences of pride and the rewards of hard work and risk.  The absense of politics in this movie make it better but cliche (not the bad cliche) message remains... war is hell and it doesn't end with the mission.

Prochnow is brilliant in this film.  There is a subtly to his performance. You see in his eyes that he's been through a lot and that most of the time, he's experienced the dangers the face all too often. You also see in his eyes when he fears the unknown. I'm convinced he could have gone three and half hours without a line of dialogue and I wouldn't have missed anything, yet another sign of great filmmaking and a great performance... a good story, real emotions and compelling conflicts are more essential than lines of dialogue describing them.

This movie exists in and of itself. That's what makes it work better than anything else. It doesn't start, progress into a conflict and continue to its resolution.  There's no real, beginning, middle and end which is why I would have had no trouble just watching it forever. The mission lasts the length of the movie and everything that happens is a part of it. The flow of the film, or the story, of the mission, whichever you decide, is seamless.

Wolfgang Peterson has given us some bad movies, i.e. The Perfect Storm and Air Force One. Neither of those movies were poorly made however, they just did a lot of things wrong that Das Boot did right and I could say that about so many other movies because Das Boot... really doesn't do anything wrong.