See-worthy

A war drama resurfaces

by Gary Susman

DAS BOOT: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT. Written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. With Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Klaus Wennemann. A Columbia Pictures release.

When Das Boot first came ashore in the US, in 1982, it was the most expensive German movie ever made, and it became the most successful foreign film yet released in America, earning six Oscar nominations. Based on the memoirs of Lothar-Günther Buchheim, a German naval correspondent during World War II, the movie related the untold story of what life was like for German submarine crews. Das Boot was cited for its pre-Steadicam handheld-camera work, the verisimilitude of its full-scale re-creations of U-boats, and its exciting battle sequences. But the story also had a universality that explains its international appeal: it wasn't about Nazi ideology at all but about the way soldiers in a unit handle the ordeals of wartime.

With the incredible advances in sound and computer technology over the last 15 years, however, came the opportunity for writer/director Wolfgang Petersen (who has since become a top Hollywood action director of such films as In the Line of Fire and Outbreak) to update the film to today's digital standards. In addition to restoring the negative, Petersen has digitally re-recorded from scratch all the sound effects. In a properly equipped theater, moviegoers can hear every drip and gurgle, every groan of the hull as it buckles under pressure, and every ping of bursting rivets as they ricochet throughout the cabin.

Columbia Pictures calls this the most extensive digital revamping this side of the Star Wars trilogy, but a more apt analogy might be to Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy. Petersen has added more than an hour of footage to a theatrical release that wasn't short to begin with. Of course, his original version was a six-hour cut made as a mini-series for German TV. The filmmaker calls this new release, which clocks in at three and a half hours, the definitive version, but we've heard that before from Oliver Stone, George Lucas, and Coppola, who has recarved his Godfather saga more times than a Benihana chef.

Das Boot's added footage is mostly character-development material. There's very little plot in the film; most of the movie is devoted to showing the routine of day-to-day life on the sub. It's a life of extreme claustrophobia and zero privacy, an existence of long stretches of intense boredom punctuated by moments of intense terror.

The crew on this boat are green, baby-faced recruits eager for action. Among them is a naval correspondent (Herbert Grönemeyer), the fictional stand-in for Buchheim and the eyes and ears for the audience, too. Some of the crew believe in the Nazi ideology, but for the more seasoned Captain (Jürgen Prochnow), claims of German supremacy don't jibe with his knowledge that the U-boat fleet is ill-managed and outgunned by the British. After long weeks of little action and some terrifying confrontations with the enemy, the only motivating force the crew has is survival. Late in the film, the officers, scruffy and unkempt from weeks at sea, are greeted as heroes by the spiffy, pampered brass on a supply ship, but the well-fed hosts clearly have no idea of the hardships suffered by the U-boat crew, or that the only heroic thing they have done is not get killed. "Here in the middle of the sea, it's always another story," sighs the Captain. (A title card tells us that of the 40,000 Germans who served on U-boats, 30,000 died at sea.)

Is all this new material necessary? At 210 minutes, without intermission, you'll certainly know what it feels like to be trapped in a confined space for a long time. It's not unlike watching The Wages of Fear, where more than two hours of unbearable suspense and tension are capped by a bitterly ironic and abrupt climax. The action sequences are indeed impressive and thrilling, if a little Star Trek-y (like Kirk, the Captain takes incredible risks with the lives of his crew, and there are many shots where the camera is jiggled to simulate the impact of a depth charge). What remains memorable, however, is the faces of the crew -- their boredom, anxiety, and ultimately relief at having helped one another cheat death once more. Says the Captain, "All you need is good people."