Ye Olde Staging Point

Yesterday, I watched the director's cut of Das Boot. I'd seen bits and pieces of the film before, and had read about half of the book many years back, but had never sat down to experience it straight through. If you haven't seen it, it's the story of a German U-boat and its crew during the Second World War, just as the tide is turning against the Germans in the Atlantic.

Note: spoilers follow.

It was an excellent film. More notably for me, it was an exhausting film to watch. It's rare that a movie is able to take you through so many emotional highs and lows in just a few short hours. The film definitely earns itself a place on any list of great war stories.

War tales use different storytelling techniques to communicate their messages--some are subtle, others blatant. In Das Boot, I understood one of the main themes to be that in war, the costs almost always outweigh the triumphs. Throughout the film, the crew of the U-96 accomplishes great feats and achieves many victories--personal and tactical--but in every case, a subsequent realization, loss, or consequence renders the triumph utterly hollow and devoid of meaning.

This can be seen on many different levels. In one early triumph, the U-96 ambushes a convoy and manages to bring down a massive tanker--but within seconds of their victory, they come under a relentless, extended depth-charge attack that nearly destroys their vessel. The captain tries to encourage the crew by reminding them of their "kill"--but by that time, their silence and numb facial expressions make it clear that they would have gladly forgone that triumph in exchange for a reprieve from the Allied navy's retaliation.

Personal victories, no matter how small, are similarly dashed to pieces on a regular basis. We, the audience, feel a surge of happiness when one crewmember is given an opportunity to head home to be with his deathly-ill wife--and we feel crushed when we learn that orders from "on high" have killed that chance. Later, the U-96 surfaces to finish off a damaged Allied tanker--but the crew's shouts of victory turn quickly to sobs of horror when they realize that they've just sunk a completely helpless ship still full of not-yet-rescued crewmen.

The ultimate and most powerful hollow victory comes at the close of the film, when the U-96's crew performs absolutely unbelievable feats of courage and self-sacrifice to save the ship. After suffering through so much and managing to rise above the absolute worst that nature and the enemy could visit upon them--at the very moment of their triumphant homecoming, at the moment when it seems that all of their sacrifices might somehow be justified... at that moment, almost all of them die suddenly and brutally at the hands of a cruel deus ex machina that threatens to render meaningless every single noble deed they'd managed to accomplish on their hellish voyage home.

Like All Quiet on the Western Front, it forces us to abandon ideological myths about war and come face to face with its reality. Highly recommended.