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DAS BOOT (1981) (****)

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Sometimes just watching people do their jobs is fascinating. That’s what makes this film so great. The job this film watches is a grueling and life-threatening one.

The film follows a German U-boat mission from start to finish. That’s pretty much it. They experience depth charges, enemy fire and sinking to the bottom of the Straight of Gibraltar. The crew is led by Capt.-Lt. Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock (Jürgen Prochnow, THE ENGLISH PATIENT), a career sailor who is not a Nazi and has little respect for the fools running his country. Along on the mission is photographer Lt. Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer), who serves as the viewer’s eyes and ears into the world of operating a submarine. The Captain’s right hand man is Chief Engineer Fritz Grade (Klaus Wennemann), a man with sad eyes, but an optimistic heart.

These are the three characters we get to know the most deeply, but other crew members help display the range of emotions and feelings that can occur when serving in a 10 feet by 150 feet tube at 150 meters under the ocean’s surface. The sub itself serves as a character in the film. With its cramped quarters, the claustrophobia is evident to the viewer. When comparing the 3 ½ hour director's cut and the 2 ½ hour theatrical cut is that the background characters get fleshed out more fully. This adds more power to the harrowing action sequences, because we care about all these men. Each one of them has a history and a future. It also makes the ending all the more crushing.

Director Wolfgang Petersen creates great tension over the course of a long film. Part of doing so is making his heroic captain flawed. He has earned the respect of his crew, but he still makes mistakes that put their lives in jeopardy. It highlights the difficulties of what they do. It's not easy or glamorous like so many sub films made it out before. The combination of pacing and sound builds to a breathtaking sequences, literally, as the sub begins to run out of air. And when it comes to sound, watch how Petersen uses silence so effectively to tighten his grip on the audience.

Jost Vacano's camerawork isn’t flashy, but does its job of chronicling the events in a dramatic and engaging fashion that showcases the difficulties and hardships of the characters.

The film also serves as a true ode to the grunt. The solider that gets no respect. The scenes when the crew gets its new orders, watch the sinking of an enemy ship and the haggard sailors in the closing define this idea. Men who hold parties and wear fancy clothes send these men off on suicide missions. Where’s the justice in that? The ending of the film is perfect, adding the right note of irony to encapsulate the randomness of war. It’s one of the best war movies I’ve ever seen.

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Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks