Not the Boot I thought it was

I'd thought all this time that Das Boot would be a chore.

The line I'd heard about it was "The movie is like three hours long, and it's set entirely inside the submarine!"

Well, that's wrong. It isn't three hours, unless you watch the director's cut, which I didn't. I prefer theatrical versions whenever possible. The theatrical version is 2:29. Also, it's not entirely inside a German U-Boat. It starts and ends outside the boat, and also has a middle portion outside the boat.

But what I had always read between those words was that Das Boot was the 1981 version of what we now call "slow cinema." Never mind that its director, Wolfgang Petersen, would go on to direct action movies like Air Force One and genre movies like Outbreak. He wasn't directing those movies in 1981, so I thought this was some kind of meditation on boredom. That he was, indeed, tasking us with the knowledge of what it's like to be trapped inside a submarine without anything to do, like Bela Tarr might do.

Wrong.

My what a thrilling movie. Even knowing how much longer the movie had to go, I was in constant doubt about the crew emerging from any particular scrape unscathed. Petersen's ability to ratchet up the tension obviously made him a candidate to direct those later Hollywood films, but I would never have guessed how masterful that ability is. This guy was truly skilled in the art of cinematic manipulation.

And what camerawork. You'd expect there to be limitations on a camera's movements inside a submarine -- if the movie was not shot on an actual submarine, it was shot on an equally claustrophobic set, which is just a limiting in terms of cinematography. So I really don't know how they did those shots where the camera follows a man running full speed to his station down the length of the boat, through circular openings that a cameraman should not be able to navigate while still holding the shot steady. So clearly some kind of mechanical device was involved, but that only makes it more impressive.

Oh, there's some time devoted to being bored on a submarine. About 15 minutes, I'd say.

I could go on at length about the things I loved about Das Boot, including its perfect ending, but I don't have a lot of time to write right now so I'll just cut it there.

But if you thought you were going to have to save your eventual viewing of Das Boot for a really rainy day where you really had nothing better to do, think again. This one is on Netflix now, at least where I live, and it's exciting enough to be your Saturday night movie.