'Das Boot'

A three-and-a-half hour German film about a submarine.

I dove right in and was thoroughly impressed maybe far more than I expected to be.

Das Boot is noted for its reality. The actual captain of U-96 of which the film is based and other consultants were brought in by director Wolfgang Peterson to make sure the film showed "what war is all about."

It is by no means an action-packed three-and-a-half hours. It's filled with as much tedium and boredom as the actual sailors felt while out to sea for six months. We, the audience, are tested along with the crew. We realize that serving on a U-boat was not extravagant and required a lot more chasing -- goose chases, if you will -- only to find out your prey have already gone somewhere else. Actually, neither of us are being tested. They're actors and we're on our couches eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

A big theme of the film is politics, or the relative lack thereof when you're in the middle of the ocean dodging depth charges. At the beginning of the film, the captain and crew are at a club in La Rochelle the night before their departure.

There a drunken crew member openly mocks not just Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler. While out to sea, we learn that just one of the crew was largely pro-Nazi. Most were apathetic or apolitical whilst the captain was openly anti-Nazi.

As this might seem ridiculous considering our ideas about Nazi Germany and everyone being on board, according to one U-boat commander, party loyalty or zeal were not considered for U-boat assignment until later in the war when the battle at sea was being lost and morale waned. Another historian has noted that U-boat crews were probably the least pro-Nazi of all the German armed forces.