![]() When it comes to truly losing one’s self in a role, this is quite a powerful performance. While I’m sure Petersen applied a lot of make-up to achieve the haunted look on Prochnow’s face, no make-up can achieve the power of his thousand-mile stare and hauntingly piercing blue eyes. Prochnow achieves this illustrious turn through a frightening sense of weariness. By the time the film ends, he is simply alive and surviving. While he starts the film off hardened and a little beaten, he still has some life in him and the ability to smile and appreciate things. His transformation throughout the film is really something to behold. The entire cast gave stellar performances, but special mention must be given to Jurgen Prochnow as the Captain. Also, the camera-work did a great job of really placing you in the action and tension of the film’s many moments when life and death hanged in a precarious and inherently chaotic balance. When I finish this review, I may walk around my house a little bit just to get a sense of freedom. The sense of claustrophobia was practically smothering and I was in a more comfortable sized bed-room. ![]() That feeling persisted through out the entire film. There was hardly any room to sleep or walk, let alone maneuver and be comfortable. The ship itself was tiny and very crowded. Also, I have never watched a film that made me feel as claustrophobic as this film does. ![]() It served a legitimate historical purpose. At no point in the film, did I feel like any thing was put in to look cool or stylistic. ![]() As I’ve read elsewhere on the internet, they created a virtually perfect recreation of one of the German U-Boats that was actually used, and the extreme attention to detail and realism is apparent in virtually every scene. You even have the the one member of the crew who is loyal to the Nazi regime instead of just loyal to Germany who comes to see the reality of his situation.įrom a technical perspective, this film is practically flawless. There is the young man who writes a letter every day to his French girlfriend despite knowing that he’s probably never going to see her again. You have the sheer will and determination of the Chief Engineer who saves the ship from certain doom. One of the other named crew members, Johann, is a veteran of countless patrols but during one harrowing encounter he cracks under the nerve-wracking pressure of the Allied attack. Lieutenant Werner starts out as an eager and bright-eyed journalist who is meant to feed the German propaganda machine by capturing one of the “heroic” U-Boats in action but he ends up a disillusioned and broken mess by the end of the film. One of the most fantastic things that the film accomplishes is that despite (for whatever odd reason it doesn’t do it) not naming the vast majority of the cast besides their rank on the ship, you get a very large number of compelling and complete psychological portraits of the crew of this ship. Without wanting to ruin anything, the film has one of the most shocking and heart-breaking endings of any film I’ve ever watched. At the center of the film is the boat’s unnamed Captain played by the marvelous Jurgen Prochnow ( Beerfest), who starts the film as a man haunted by the realities of submarine warfare and is broken down even further by film’s ending. Deeply claustrophobic in presentation, the film examines the psychology and character of the very large crew that services the ship as they turn from a fresh-faced crew of young boys (some crew members excepted) to a battle-hardened and grizzled group of survivors. It chronicles the trials and tribulations of the crew of a German U-Boat at the end of World War II as they suffer one near death experience after another. I just finished Wolfgang Petersen’s classic war picture, Das Boot, and clocking in at three and a half hours, it is officially the longest film I’ve reviewed for this blog but also one of the most thrilling and engaging.ĭas Boot is a 1981 German film that was originally a six hour long miniseries for German television that was edited down to a two and a half hour film and eventually re-released in the 90’s at its current length of 3 1/2 hours. Right now, I’m on one of those high quality streaks as this film makes three out of the last four movies I’ve reviewed films that have received the normally elusive score of “A” from me, and honestly, this film was easily the best of the bunch, and only it’s completely exhausting length kept it from the even more elusive “A+”. By this blog’s very nature, I am mostly watching award-winning and nominated films so the quality curve is obviously slightly tilted. I might watch 4 or 5 movies in a row that I give at least an A- and the same thing could happen with movies that I give no higher than a B to. When it comes to the quality of films that I review for this blog, the quality can be streakier than a poorly washed window.
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