My dad and I saw it when it came out. When it ended I said, That was intense. My dad replied, At least it had a happy ending. And he meant it!
My dad and I saw it when it came out. When it ended I said, That was intense. My dad replied, At least it had a happy ending. And he meant it!
I agree with your dad. My alternative happy ending would have been for the Captain to scuttle the ship on a Portuguese beach with the crew spending the war interned on a sunny beach drinking the fabulous varieties of wine of that country.
I guess that this posting is intended to honor Wolfgang Petersen who died eight days ago. He had a great ability to use cinematography to tell a story. Some of his works that were not as popular such as “Enemy Mine” deserve reconsideration. The personal interactions and the uses of language in “Das Boot” make it more than a routine war movie.
I did not realize Enemy Mine was a Wolfgang Peterson movie. I always loved that movie and thought it was under-rated.
spoiler alert
yes, when it came out the alien was a pregnant woman, it blew my mind (i was a kid)
I guess the whole thing is a fictionalized account, so it’s kind of right there on the cover not to take it so seriously, but Wikipedia says this is based on a book written in 1973 based on that book’s author’s (Lothar-Günther Buchheim) experiences as a Nazi propagandist assigned to write about U-boats in action?
Art is art I suppose, but in the theme of shying away from the Uber-authored research, this one seems like a fair avoid. The fiction feels a bit uncomfortable here — there’s something in the article about the director showing “what war is all about”:
> During production, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96 during Buchheim’s 1941 patrol and one of Germany’s top U-boat “tonnage aces” during the war, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on U-219, served as consultants
This implies the actual ending was a bit different than the film (the captain dies there). Maybe this is a depiction of what war is all about, but this very specific thing went somewhat differently so that’s a tough one to digest! From the submarine’s Wikipedia page:
> On the way she encountered the Spanish SS Cabo de Hornos, which returned from South America, after delivering a group of Jewish refugees to the Dutch colony of Curaçao, when Brazil denied them entry.[38] When U-96’s torpedo missed, the ship was stopped and her papers checked.[39] On 6 December 1941, after 41 days at sea, U-96 returned to Saint Nazaire, having sunk one ship of 5,998 GRT.[40]
Anyway that seems like at least one point in the reality weirder than fiction category.
Thanks for pointing out the story behind the story. The casualty rate of the U-Boot service was 70-80%. Herr Buchheim’s story is a literal example of survivorship bias. There is a human tendency to romanticize our circumstances. The men of the German submarine service would have been better off, and the world would have been better off, if they all would have scuttled their boats and run to a neutral country. I think that the movie makes that point in an indirect manner. I watched the six hour version a few years ago. I remain convinced that Petersen was a very good film-maker.
The ending was bootiful