Das Cinema
Feb. 6th, 2006 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicI'm sitting here looking forlornly at the beat-up VHS case of "Das Boot" I picked up from the library, because I really want to see it, but I really don't want to see it dubbed, and dubbed this version is. Yet the tape appears to be the only copy in town. Sigh. On the bright side, the reason the Nikopol comics haven't shown up yet is that there actually aren't any in the entire county (wait for it), so the library is going to buy them for me to borrow.
Continuing the German WWII movies theme, I watched "U-571" last night, which, though it turned out better than I expected from the case and cast, pretty much proved Saturday's point about Hollywood movies vs. world cinema.
First off, let me say that it was reasonably entertaining. It just wasn't great, and there's more to complain about than there is to praise, so this is going to be mostly complaining. Okay then.
It started out from the Germans' point of view, which could have worked except it then completely dropped their storyline except (a) to show them following the Fuhrer's orders to murder any refugees who spot them and (b) to kill them all off except the captain, who ended up dead later anyway. The Germans were portrayed alternately as incompetent (an entire crew can't get their engine started, but a young American gets it going with little trouble; they're poor marksmen with firearms, cannons and depth charges alike) and morally compromised (killing innocents without much argument, whereas the Americans commit wanton insubordination when they disagree with their commanding officers), making the Americans' victory over them easy both on the tactics and on the conscience.
I was willing to go along with the improbable odds and heightened drama because I thought there really had been a crew who managed to hijack a crippled U-boat, dodge another U-boat, take down a destroyer, and carry the Enigma equipment to Britain, and it's understandable to play up the patriotic-heroics for that; however, as it turns out, the premise was cobbled together from several different incidents and slopped on top of pure fiction, in which case there was really no excuse for the melodrama and predictability, not to mention the cardboard supporting characters and mostly godawful dialogue ("Please, sir, don't tell the other guys I'm half German -- they'll hate me!"). On top of which, it was the Brits who rescued the Enigma machine. I read online today that England wasn't amused when "U-571" came out, and Tony Blair made a statement to the effect that the filmmakers would have done better to make up their movie entirely instead of stealing another country's thunder and passing it off as truth.
But aside from historical inaccuracy, the movie could at least have been fair to its characters. Let's focus on the German captain because he was the most mistreated (both by other characters and by the script writers), and yes, because he was played by Thomas Kretschmann, which isn't why I'm arguing his case but is why I was paying attention to his character. After doing a lot of ineffectual yelling at the beginning of the movie, ordering his gunman to open fire on a raft full of refugees (quite the ironic change from his position in "Stalingrad," eh?), and getting duped into welcoming two boats full of armed Americans posing as Germans on board and getting taken hostage for his troubles, the captain proved his mettle as a clever and brave officer willing to sacrifice his life for his cause in a way much quieter than the seamen who co-opted his ship. But he wasn't portrayed as clever or brave; in fact, the movie was quite content to shove him to the background most of the time.
Consider that once in the hands of his enemies, he was smart enough not to tell them he was the captain; though he spoke no English (we assume, or that could have been another deception), he communicated that he was an electrician, making himself a useful prisoner; managed to knock out the man keeping watch over him while handcuffed to a rail with his back to the room, then unlock his cuffs and bind the other man in his place; shoot another member of the crew before getting shot himself; and then, most impressively, once they bound him head and foot to a bunk and left him there, he figured out what was going on outside the ship and tapped out a message in Morse code with his hand on the wall to try and alert the destroyer above them that it was headed for a trap and should fire on them. What did he get for his troubles? Manhandled, derided and called ugly (no comment was made on the quick shot where the Naval officer taunts him, BTW), manacled, shot, tied up again, and fatally slammed in the head with an axe. Not a word from the Americans as to his quick wits or ingenuity. Not only weren't they impressed by his actions, they didn't think him worth the bother of worrying over. They didn't talk (or presumably think) about him at all, other than to restrain him when he tried to escape.
I figured, when the Americans rescued the captain from the water after the other boat went down (the best thing they did for him in the whole film), that they would tie him up and at least try to talk to him, if not realize what a formidable opponent he was and even come to some sort of understanding that they were all dedicated officers and soldiers trying to protect their sides in the war. But no. They didn't even bother using either of the translators they had on board, over whom much to-do had already been made, to talk to him. I understand that this was (supposed to be) war and soldiers are best capable of functioning when the enemy is depersonalized, but neither the movie nor the men made a point of that depersonalization; it was entirely unremarked upon, just treated as a natural and unquestioned way to handle a POW. I don't know if I'm explaining this right. Despite what this entry might suggest, there wasn't enough attention paid to him to make the depersonalization an issue. And that was a major disappointment after "Stalingrad," where everyone was written as and treated like a person, at least until they became too numb to think, and that was in itself a tragedy. The way "U-571" went, the captain may as well have been left to drown -- or for that matter, they may as well have cut the opening scene in the U-boat, because none of the men served any purpose other than to, rather pathetically (in the original sense of pathos) if you disregard the POV of the film, let their enemies on board by accident and get mowed down or blown up.
That's all I'm going to get into, because the rest is more of the same big-budget historical-fiction beef. I will add, though, that Harvey Keitel remains creepy, Matthew McConaughey remains boring, Thomas Kretschmann remains a chameleon, and a scene near the beginning made me add one more category to the post about sexy foreign language-speaking from last week.
Continuing the German WWII movies theme, I watched "U-571" last night, which, though it turned out better than I expected from the case and cast, pretty much proved Saturday's point about Hollywood movies vs. world cinema.
First off, let me say that it was reasonably entertaining. It just wasn't great, and there's more to complain about than there is to praise, so this is going to be mostly complaining. Okay then.
It started out from the Germans' point of view, which could have worked except it then completely dropped their storyline except (a) to show them following the Fuhrer's orders to murder any refugees who spot them and (b) to kill them all off except the captain, who ended up dead later anyway. The Germans were portrayed alternately as incompetent (an entire crew can't get their engine started, but a young American gets it going with little trouble; they're poor marksmen with firearms, cannons and depth charges alike) and morally compromised (killing innocents without much argument, whereas the Americans commit wanton insubordination when they disagree with their commanding officers), making the Americans' victory over them easy both on the tactics and on the conscience.
I was willing to go along with the improbable odds and heightened drama because I thought there really had been a crew who managed to hijack a crippled U-boat, dodge another U-boat, take down a destroyer, and carry the Enigma equipment to Britain, and it's understandable to play up the patriotic-heroics for that; however, as it turns out, the premise was cobbled together from several different incidents and slopped on top of pure fiction, in which case there was really no excuse for the melodrama and predictability, not to mention the cardboard supporting characters and mostly godawful dialogue ("Please, sir, don't tell the other guys I'm half German -- they'll hate me!"). On top of which, it was the Brits who rescued the Enigma machine. I read online today that England wasn't amused when "U-571" came out, and Tony Blair made a statement to the effect that the filmmakers would have done better to make up their movie entirely instead of stealing another country's thunder and passing it off as truth.
But aside from historical inaccuracy, the movie could at least have been fair to its characters. Let's focus on the German captain because he was the most mistreated (both by other characters and by the script writers), and yes, because he was played by Thomas Kretschmann, which isn't why I'm arguing his case but is why I was paying attention to his character. After doing a lot of ineffectual yelling at the beginning of the movie, ordering his gunman to open fire on a raft full of refugees (quite the ironic change from his position in "Stalingrad," eh?), and getting duped into welcoming two boats full of armed Americans posing as Germans on board and getting taken hostage for his troubles, the captain proved his mettle as a clever and brave officer willing to sacrifice his life for his cause in a way much quieter than the seamen who co-opted his ship. But he wasn't portrayed as clever or brave; in fact, the movie was quite content to shove him to the background most of the time.
Consider that once in the hands of his enemies, he was smart enough not to tell them he was the captain; though he spoke no English (we assume, or that could have been another deception), he communicated that he was an electrician, making himself a useful prisoner; managed to knock out the man keeping watch over him while handcuffed to a rail with his back to the room, then unlock his cuffs and bind the other man in his place; shoot another member of the crew before getting shot himself; and then, most impressively, once they bound him head and foot to a bunk and left him there, he figured out what was going on outside the ship and tapped out a message in Morse code with his hand on the wall to try and alert the destroyer above them that it was headed for a trap and should fire on them. What did he get for his troubles? Manhandled, derided and called ugly (no comment was made on the quick shot where the Naval officer taunts him, BTW), manacled, shot, tied up again, and fatally slammed in the head with an axe. Not a word from the Americans as to his quick wits or ingenuity. Not only weren't they impressed by his actions, they didn't think him worth the bother of worrying over. They didn't talk (or presumably think) about him at all, other than to restrain him when he tried to escape.
I figured, when the Americans rescued the captain from the water after the other boat went down (the best thing they did for him in the whole film), that they would tie him up and at least try to talk to him, if not realize what a formidable opponent he was and even come to some sort of understanding that they were all dedicated officers and soldiers trying to protect their sides in the war. But no. They didn't even bother using either of the translators they had on board, over whom much to-do had already been made, to talk to him. I understand that this was (supposed to be) war and soldiers are best capable of functioning when the enemy is depersonalized, but neither the movie nor the men made a point of that depersonalization; it was entirely unremarked upon, just treated as a natural and unquestioned way to handle a POW. I don't know if I'm explaining this right. Despite what this entry might suggest, there wasn't enough attention paid to him to make the depersonalization an issue. And that was a major disappointment after "Stalingrad," where everyone was written as and treated like a person, at least until they became too numb to think, and that was in itself a tragedy. The way "U-571" went, the captain may as well have been left to drown -- or for that matter, they may as well have cut the opening scene in the U-boat, because none of the men served any purpose other than to, rather pathetically (in the original sense of pathos) if you disregard the POV of the film, let their enemies on board by accident and get mowed down or blown up.
That's all I'm going to get into, because the rest is more of the same big-budget historical-fiction beef. I will add, though, that Harvey Keitel remains creepy, Matthew McConaughey remains boring, Thomas Kretschmann remains a chameleon, and a scene near the beginning made me add one more category to the post about sexy foreign language-speaking from last week.
