Favorite Film #66, 1981: Das Boot. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

The greatest submarine film of all time. Director Wolfgang Peterson shoots Das Boot like a science fiction blockbuster. The framing and color choice of every single shot is so bombastic and exciting, it makes the environment feel more real than any war film I’ve ever seen! But Das Boot is not an exciting film, it’s a three and a half hour crawl through the most unbearable tension imaginable. Every single war sequence is a waiting game for the most horrible situation to somehow get even worse. Because in Das Boot, you never believe that the soldiers have a remote fighting chance, and instead spend every scene worrying about the submarine finally exploding and killing everyone. I’m not really rooting for anyone’s survival, because you know, they’re nazi’s. But Das Boot does a hell of a job spending enough time with it’s characters, that you can still recognize the inherent humanity in them and become extremely antsy every time the submarine gets bombarded. And the naval battles are easily the most thrilling sequences I’ve experienced in any war movie! Because when every single choice is a matter between life and death, it gives every single second an unbearable amount of weight. Das Boot is an absolutely incredible achievement in film history; a German film set in WWII that manages to make you care about it’s characters while never losing it’s anti-war sentiment. It’s really weird to me that the guy who directed this would later go on to direct The Neverending Story. I guess he really needed some escapism.