Plot: During WWII, a German war journalist spends an entire sail with an U-boot crew. With them he lives endless hours of boredom and sea sickness, until the presence of the enemy turns the whole experience into a mish mash of adrenaline and claustrophobia.
Comments: Wolfgang Petersen's "Das boot" is a film that any warfilm lover should watch at least once, specially if submarine films are their thing. It's not the best submarine film ever, although it may come close. What makes it so special is its verosimilitude. But please, don't take that word literally, because the film has its own problems with reality. I for one found quite unbeliveable that a German U-boat could be packed with so many people having such an un-Nazi attitude, and there are also a couple of situations in there where a real submarine just wouldn't have survived.
What makes "Das boot" so fascinating, and so succesful, is that it rarely tries to be espectacular or action packed. Canned inside their ship, the crew spends hour after hour after hour eating, performing their various duties, fighting each others and trash-talking any women they have ever met. There's no room for war bravado, patriotism or bloodlust, just for boredom and claustrophobia. Action, when it happens, is often sudden and it's hard to make out what's going on outside the ship. The occasional victory, such as the stalking and sinking of a cargo vessel, is tainted by the fear of being catched off guard by the enemy in any moment and the realisation of the enormity of their actions. One of "Das boot" more character-driven scenes features the captain of the U-boat trying to explain why he didn't rescue the victims of his attack. It's great not because it shows the human side of the captain, but because it shows he can't tell exactly why he didn't. He just frozes in fury at the question, and then he mumbles about the cramped space inside the ship (in the book, the narrator also mentions he's not allowed to rescue enemy shipmen) but it doesn't really matter. In his expression you can tell he would have wanted to do something, and that the reasons why he didn't are stronger than his will.
Not that the film, even in this 5-hour restored version, relies much in character study or motivation. And yet the film comes to life with every shot of a tired sailor, with their vacant looks when they hear the distant -or close- sound of enemy depth charges, with every travelling following the crew at the height of their activity during an emergency dive. Its lack of focus, of any resemblance of plot would have sunk -no pun intended- any other film. But here boredom and the futility of everything are the central topics. Together they easily ammount for 99% of the running time, but this doesn't make the complete film a bit less fascinating.
