The story of life in an U-Boot during the war, this 1981 film explores the psyche and trials of the men serving their country under the sea. Giving a different view of the war from many other films – even other films focusing on submarine culture, as this this does focus on the psychological terror the men were facing – this film can serve an educational function. However, without an AP theme to tie into here and given the American rating anyway, it might be preferred in a university level.
Das Boot is one of very few films starring Herbert Grönemeyer, who played Lt. Werner. His music career was taking off in the following years, so he decided to focus on that instead. That being said, he has been in some films recently, such as A Most Wanted Man (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman). For anyone who hasn’t followed his music career, I would also recommend that – mostly soft rock, and mostly clear enough for students to learn to understand. Männer, Zeit dass sich was dreht, Mambo, and Mensch are among my students’ favorites!
If you think you recognize Capt.-Lt. Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock from American TV and film, you’re probably not wrong. Jürgen Prochnow is a successful actor throughout the U.S. and Europe, and much of that success stemmed from the popularity of this film. He’d been in films dating back about a decade before Das Boot, including the Verfilmung Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum. Since Das Boot, you may recognize him in The Da Vinci Code, The English Patient, Judge Dredd, Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, or several various TV shows in both German and English.
Another famous name is Uwe Ochsenknecht, who may currently be more famous for having famous sons, but still has his own successful career going for him. In 2019 alone, he’s expected to be in five film releases and two TV series. Potentially the most famous of his recent films among German teachers is Willkommen bei den Hartmanns.
The vast majority of the cast continued with successful careers after this film, so I won’t go through them all. Long story short – the acting in this film is second to none. It’s intense, and there’s a reason Das Boot continues to live strong in film history!
This film is rated R. PG-13 was not added to the U.S. rating system until 3 years later. It’s R rating is due to war violence and brief language, much of which one may argue barely falls into the PG-13 category today. (There is a moment of war-related gore, which is pretty graphic, about 48 minutes in, but still nothing like what one may see in PG-13 in 2019.) I was not able to find the short scene of nudity that was mentioned in IMDB, but then again, my cut of this film is just over an hour and a half, not over two hours as stated in IMDB, so it may not have existed in my version.