Das Boot

Das Boot

Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Language: German (with subtitles)
Writer: Lothar G. Buchheim

I saw this series when I was a child, in 1986, and the movie when I was a men. Das Boot is a film that told the history of a German submarine (Das U-96) and its tripulation. The U-96 had the mission to patrol the north Atlantic during the second world war. In this movie, it is presented the difference between different people and their different way to face the danger and the tragedy of the war. The principal characters are the captain Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock. He was a Junker that served in the Kriegsmarine, cause that it is his family tradition, and Werner, the corresponsal, born in a American colony, working on write reports for the propaganda ministry.

The director had shown the contrast between the tripulation members, specifically between an Nazi lieutenant and the anothers men that fought because they had no options. The movie is about troopers, not about war, don't show bad and goods, it is exploring the tripulation's fears and motivations that force them to make the best to accomplish with an impossible missions, survive the war and return home to see once time more their loved ones. Normal people placed in abnormal scenarios. The combat scenes are claustrophobic. You can feel the tripulation's feelings. The climax is, in my opinion, the Gibraltar strait cross, in this scene the submarine is attacked for every side. If you want to know the end rent the movie. Not for weak minds.

Wenn Jäger zu Gejagten werden (when the hunter becomes the hunted).

On other hand, historically, for the first half of the WWII, the kriegsmarine used the u-boat force as an efficient tool to destroy the England logistic line. When the allied strategy changed, new patterns for the submarine seek and destruction were developed and the airplanes start to patrol the ocean, it was the end of the German wolves in the north Atlantic. Finally almost all the U-boot class submarine were sunk, with 30.000 men inside of them.


Next One
If you enjoy the movie, the next one must be Stalingrad, directed by Joseph Vilsmaier.