Das Boot (Director's Cut) [DVD] [1998]

Every 5 years or so Hollywood goes a bit crazy about a foreign language film and often showers it in awards whether it's deserved or not. Films like Downfall and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and many others have then often captured the public's attention and become big hits and successful at the box office. Well in the case of the two films just mentioned all the fuss was more than justified, in the case of Das Boot The directors Cut it's just the same and, perhaps more so.Wolfgang Peterson, who went on to have a extremely successful Hollywood career, wrote and directed this quite stunning movie about the terrors of undersea warfare during WW2. The chances of surviving the war was about 1 in 4 and this supremely tense, graphic and utterly believable tale shows you with unflinchingly clarity why that was. Firstly the British and American naval forces had learnt how to deal with the U-Boat threat and were becoming more successful with each month. Secondly, younger and younger crews with less reliable boats were pushed into service to cover increasing losses and thirdly, Hitler was becoming more demanding of what a U-Boat could actually do. Remember they had limited fuel, limited torpedoes and limited opportunity to actually find targets in the vast Atlantic ocean. Often patrolling in atrocious weather conditions with viability down to virtually zero just locating a target, any target, was often down to out-and-out luck. The U-Boats mission to disrupt allied shipping sufficiently to starve Britain out of the war of course eventually failed, but it was not through lack of the courage of the crews.Starting with some short establishing scenes in the days prior to leaving port in France, we are introduced to the crew and then we follow U-96 out to sea looking for prey. The early on board claustrophobic, gritty, damp and always busy scenes on the boat are set up extremely well and the fine often hand held camera shots following characters along the dark narrow corridors are very effective. The feeling of being there is set up early and never leaves, you ARE there with them. The feeling of enclosure is always there, the sounds, the smells, the sweat on the crew is almost palpable and a real achievement by the director and camera crew. The battle scenes, the chases, and the fleeing from destroyers dropping depth charges are almost too real. The tension built up during these underwater scenes achieved by fantastic model shots, really effective sound design and music, outstanding performances from the cast and confident direction really sell the desperate situation.As is the case with many great films, less is often more, and the simplicity and economy of some shots/scenes actually helps to sell the feeling of terror felt by the crew. Characters concentrating intently on the depth gauge as they attempt to evade being located by the enemy by going lower and lower, well beyond the boats rating, are done simply. These scenes could have been all Gung Ho with lots of special effects, but staying on desperate and terrified faces, covered in sweat and oil, really brings home the true terror of being so far below water. The immense pressure on the thin hull expressed by those terrified faces works wonderfully and humanising the war and of course helps us get to know the crew a little better and in doing so care about them. Jurgen Prochnow's, as the captain, gives a performance of such subtle power that you really feel for him as he tries to keep his crew and his boat safe.However there are two “however's” for me at least. There are quite a few editing errors (nothing major) that I suspect are there because of the difficulties involved in restoring a film and (more importantly) the last ten minutes or so feels like a different film, the simplicity and believability of the story goes a bit astray, the tone changes quite suddenly from gritty realism to Hollywood “end the film with a big bang” with a large dose of shmaltz thrown in for good measure. I'm not saying it's particularly badly done but it did feel “tacked on” and a little Hollywoodized. Considering this is the “Directors cut” I can only assume he wanted this ending and was happy with it. However I feel it was a mistake and we should have ended our film as it was presented to us, gritty and real.At three hours and nineteen minutes this is without doubt a very long film, however the running time it flies by. I never felt I was watching filler or scenes that didn't need to be there. Nominated for six Oscars it didn't win any, surely once again indicating how useless the Oscars are at actually awarding awards based on actual merit. It was very unlucky to be going up against Gandhi. Making a fortune at the box office it was clear the public recognised a film of real quality.The disk contains both German and English dubbed versions both with subtitles. Watching the German version with subtitles is by far the best, the English dub is distracting. Petersen provides a surprisingly enjoyable and amusing commentary track full of interesting tid-bits for the film buffs out there. There is a featurette but on my disk it does not play, however I'm sure it's on You-Tube somewhere. Considering this is a 38 year old film and this version is over twenty years old, the DVD quality is very good. The darks are dark without pixelating, grain is minimal and the sound quality is excellent, especially in the battle stations scenes.Excellent and quite an experience.

At the beginning of Das Boot we read that of the 40 000 German sailors sent out on U-boats in the Second World War, 30 000 never returned. The film then shows us one such boat sent out into the Atlantic in the autumn of 1941, and for most of the running time we do not leave this space - there are just 20 minutes or so at the beginning and a short scene at the end that are set ashore. It lasts for 200 minutes, but the time is not too long, allowing us to build a deeper sense of who these men are, and a sense of concern for them as individuals. The characterisation is very good, and builds gradually. The rhythm of the film goes between two modes: periods when nothing is happening, and there is a sense of boredom and claustrophobia, and sequences when the boat is under attack, which are very vivid, and convey the fear and nightmarish quality of being trapped beneath the sea as well as it could be done.It is above all a humanist drama, though, focusing on these men, none of whom are meant to be much over thirty. They become almost like friends to the viewer - not that it is possible to imagine being able to withstand what they go through: the captain, played by the amazing Jurgen Prochnov, who conveys tremendous reserves of strength behind his war-weary cynicism; the main character, a reporter called Werner who is somewhat naive to start with, the chief engineer, three 'watch officers', a navigator, and a number of other named characters: Hinrich, Pilgrim, Johann, Frennsen ... and a young cadet called Ullmann, very perturbed because he has left behind a French girl whom he got pregnant, who doesn't want an abortion. We become involved in their lives, and see how they think about what they do and relate to each other. Unsurprisingly, there is little time for discussion or politics. You get the impression they don't see far beyond the testing situation they are in, the desire to survive and get back home in one piece. When they attack a ship, it is regarded as a strategic undertaking. It is striking how likeable they nearly all are - only one officer is a Nazi who is motivated by ideology; the rest are just doing a job, and rather scornful of him, most likely. The film shows how ordinary people are victims of the fighting and are forced to play out these dreadful scenes of brutality, almost unthinkingly. By the end, the sense of tragedy is very strong. Wolfgang Petersen directs with great feeling for his characters, while not attempting to analyse the politics of what was going on behind the scenes, so that it really is the War seen through a submariner's eyes. He had previously directed Jurgen Prochnov in another outstanding film that is much less well-known, Die Konsequenz (1977), about an actor who has a relationship with a gay teenager for which both are severely condemned in the Switzerland of the 1970s. It was a film of great emotional power and empathy, as is this one, which is painted on a bigger canvas. I haven't seen any of his later American work, but on the evidence of these two films alone he deserves to be regarded as a filmmaker to stand with the best of the German New Wave.