25 films

Das Boot

My favourite author Italo Calvino said that he liked to be able to have a different book waiting for him to read in each room in his home. I’ve tried to emulate this sort of attitude in my own approach to reading and movie watching, usually in the midst of several at any given time. Although I realize many might find this method disruptive, I enjoy juxtaposing varying books and films, not only for variety’s sake, but also to think about the differing ideas and possibilities each presents in relation to each other. So in a similar fashion, I wanted the next movie I watched to be completely different from the last, and I believe I succeeded in choosing Wolfgang Petersen’s incredible 1981 epic Das Boot.

I love the title of this movie (and I really find it satisfying to say it out loud too.) There’s something really powerful about how stark, brutal and dispassionate the words Das Boot are, and I think the title is so apt in reflecting how the film treats it’s subject - war.



Going into this film I recalled encountering Das Boot for the first time, passing by it on a long DVD rental store shelf. Seeing the cover art, I immediately associated it as a documentary, which I think is easy to do based on the distressed, grainy black and white photo of a lone submarine. Having now watched the film I understand how that is a perfect image to represent Das Boot, and I realized how the film evokes documentary filmmaking and it’s techniques.

Using a first hand account of life in a German U-boat as it’s basis, I was most taken by was how the film was shot. Apparently Petersen was obssessed with period realism and insisted everything be recreated according to strict historical detail, right down to the submarine’s bolts. It definitely pays off since the sense of space in the cramped quarters of the bunks, the officer’s tiny dining table, and the unruly engine room are presented in such detail I almost forgot I was watching a recreation. Additionally, the way in which the camera barrels through the sub with such speed is incredible feels like the camera man really is just another soldier working on that sub, and the chaos surrounding him is actually happening.

Going into the film I had no idea what to expect from a story in which the Germans are the protagonists of a World War II film. It’s obviously easy to vilify the German soldiers fighting for the Nazis in films, as countless North American movies have done, but at the same time I think this renders them both cartoonish and inhuman. Instead, by showcasing the inevitable losing side of the war as the protagonists, Das Boot is able to approach the subject of war more dispassionately, effectively subverting the tradition of classic American “guys-on-a-mission” war epics like The Dirty Dozen, The Great Escape and Bridge on the River Kwai. Instead of showcasing examples of heroics and bravery that celebrate participation in World War II, Das Boot is able to focus on the hellish conditions of war itself and it’s ability to constantly push ordinary men towards truly inhumane situations as eviden the convoy scene embedded below:

Watching Das Boot made me appreciate those American war epics in a much different way. I still love all of those movies and think they’re fantastic works of entertainment, but it now occurs to me just how much they utilize the war setting as a jumping off point for fantastical adventures instead of anything resembling what World War II was actually like (although I’ll admit I’m far from a historian). Of course, these movies have attained a mythical status, as they starred such legendary actors in such iconic roles; but contrast the cool and collected Steve McQueen in The Great Escape with the increasingly withered U-Boat Captain played by Jürgen Prochnow in Das Boot and you can clearly see the disparity between the messages that each film is trying to communicate.