There have been some really great war movies set on submarines, but the 1981 classic Das Boot is undeniably the greatest submarine film ever made. Das Boot is adapted from a 1973 German novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, which he based on his experiences on the crew of the German submarine U-96 in World War II. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, the movie chronicles U-96’s treacherous journey during the Battle of the Atlantic through the eyes of Jürgen Prochnow’s jaded veteran Kapitänleutnant.
Das Boot has existed in a bunch of different forms over the years. The theatrical cut runs for 149 minutes, but it got re-edited into a TV miniseries in 1985 and there have been a handful of different versions on home video, including a director’s cut overseen by Petersen himself, released in 1997. From Crimson Tide to K-19: The Widowmaker to The Hunt for Red October, there have been plenty of great submarine war movies, but Das Boot — in all its forms — remains the best of the bunch.
Why Das Boot Is The Best Submarine War Movie Ever Made
It Captures What It’s Like To Serve On The Crew Of A Submarine
The problem with most tactical war movies is that they focus too much on the ins and outs of warfare without digging into the troops’ emotional experiences. Most submarine films show how battles break out at sea and how the submarine crews deal with them, but they don’t show the day-to-day lives of those crew members. Das Boot captures this perfectly; it portrays the thrill of battle, but it also shows the mundanity of everything in between. It depicts its submarine crew as a bunch of regular people who just want to do right by their crewmates and their country.
Das Boot was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Whereas submarine films like U-571 have been criticized for their historical inaccuracy, Das Boot gets it right. Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96, and Hans-Joachim Krug, a former first officer on U-219, both served as consultants on the movie. Where most war films focus on spectacle, Petersen was committed to capturing an emotional realism with Das Boot.
Why Das Boot Still Holds Up 44 Years Later
It’s A Timeless Classic
44 years after its initial release, Das Boot still holds up. What makes it so timeless is its depiction of the universal horrors of war. Petersen digs into the psychological impact that fruitless hunts and intense battles have on the submarine’s crew. Das Boot takes place during World War II, but its portrayal of the mental pressures of warfare could apply to any war in the past, present, or future. Das Boot will continue to stay relevant for as long as governments around the world keep sending their citizens into war.
