Latest / Houselights: A Film Director Podcast / Das Boot (1981) - Wolfgang Petersen | Houselights #134

Transcript

Das Boot (1981) - Wolfgang Petersen | Houselights #134 · Houselights: A Film Director Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome to the nerd Polity, Bill Coleman. Two house lights. As we
• 0:23
  enter this house of Peterson, as we look at the works of Wolfgang Peterson
• 0:28
  of the nineteen eighties, starting with his nineteen eighty one film Dos Boat,
• 0:34
  a West German war epic about a Nazi U boat that patrolled the seas of
• 0:40
  the Atlantic. So as you know, it's going to be a heavy episode.
• 0:44
  And joining me are my first officer, Tristan Riddell and my chief engineer,
• 0:52
  doctor sci Fi himself, Darren Moser. Gentleman, welcome aboard, and
• 0:57
  are you ready to set sail as we go a hunting allies in the Atlantic.
• 1:03
  And then that, Okay, that that threw me a little bit because
• 1:07
  this is my first time watching it, and I of course knew the story.
• 1:12
  I knew that it was about Nazis. I knew that it was about
• 1:15
  the batties, and and how this is this is rare for us, you
• 1:23
  know, in American culture to be watching something from the other side. There's
• 1:27
  not too many movies like that within the realms of our filmmaking that showcase that.
• 1:34
  And so I was trying I was like, okay, so I wonder
• 1:38
  how I'm going to feel watching this like, is the film is Peterson going
• 1:46
  to be able to get me to pseudo root for these people, because even
• 1:53
  though they're not the allies, they're still the protagonists, and so it's kind
• 1:57
  of like the you know, like in in in TV when you're like,
• 2:04
  I know, this is an example that we go to all the time,
• 2:06
  or at least I go to all the time. But like with Breaking Bad,
• 2:07
  you know, you have a main character who's a horrible person doing horrible
• 2:12
  things, but he's a protagonist and you kind of root for him. You
• 2:15
  end up rooting for him to do horrible things. So it makes me wonder.
• 2:19
  It made me wonder like is that are we going to have that effect
• 2:22
  with this movie? I think that's Breaking Bad is very apt. I would
• 2:27
  add in there the Shield with Uma as you follow the antics of Vic Mackie
• 2:34
  as he stretches the boundaries of what law enforcement means. That was a that
• 2:38
  was a very very interesting show to watch because it you know what, we'll
• 2:45
  get into it later. So that this is your first time watching it,
• 2:46
  Darren, this is your first time ever encountering Doss Bolt or is this the
• 2:52
  have you seen this before? This is my second time. I watched h
• 2:55
  when I was at college and lived with a whole bunch of film majors.
• 3:00
  But the only reason we would I think one of us had a copy of
• 3:02
  it, but it was probably not this exact version because we watched the super
• 3:08
  duper Ali Hooper Extended edition. The directors. Oh yeah, yeah, we
• 3:15
  should specify that, like there there's the theatrical versions, the versions, there's
• 3:20
  the TV version, like the TV miniseries version, and there's the director's cut.
• 3:24
  You know. What we try to do as much as we can is
• 3:29
  we try to watch the preferred director's version of any film that we are reviewing,
• 3:35
  because this is a director driven podcast. Yeah, well, and that's
• 3:39
  that's. Yeah. We we should flag that from the beginning that this is
• 3:43
  the director's cut, and the version you're referring to, Darren that you might
• 3:46
  have seen is the uh what exactly did they call it? It's like the
• 3:52
  the complete, the original uncut version, right, and that which is in
• 3:55
  essence, there's basically a mini series. But but there's precedent for that in
• 4:00
  American cinema as well, because The Godfather had its own television recut and Superman
• 4:06
  the movie in nineteen seventy eight had a two night television event that has since
• 4:12
  been released as a single entity, which really gives you a testament for editing
• 4:19
  things down because there are a lot of things that made sense why they weren't
• 4:23
  in the theatrical version. And I think a more recent example was The Hateful
• 4:28
  Eight did a mini series on Netflix. Yeah, that was an interesting experiment.
• 4:33
  We should you know, it's interesting because they're coming out of this.
• 4:39
  I am intrigued to watch that original uncut version that takes the mini series and
• 4:44
  puts it together for this film, because I love The Hateful Aid as a
• 4:49
  film, and I did not care for the way they cut things up for
• 4:54
  the Netflix series. I just it mainly because I think they didn't cut it
• 4:58
  appropriately for episodic, Like it was just like, yeah, it's an hour,
• 5:01
  let's cut it here. And it's like you got a little more artfulness
• 5:06
  to it than that. Yeah, Yeah, you can't go all lynch In
• 5:09
  on this. Yeah that's good pull, good pull, So let's go ahead
• 5:14
  and embrace that part of it first. So Darren, you've seen you've seen
• 5:18
  those two that this version in that version, Yeah, the Destructor's cut.
• 5:24
  If I had to guess or not. Sorry, it was one of the
• 5:25
  theatrical So it's a hair a hair shorter, but not by much. Uh,
• 5:31
  it's it's substantially I think. Isn't it a full hour shorter? I'm
• 5:35
  seeing the theatrical as one forty nine and the director's cut was two h eight
• 5:41
  because we use it, Okay, so it's not a full hour, but
• 5:45
  either way, yeah, on the point being, I saw the theatrical cut
• 5:50
  many years ago, and I had an opinion of the film back then.
• 5:55
  This is my first time encountering the director's cut, and it's interesting, is
• 6:01
  sorry for time? Math is about three hours, about three and a half
• 6:05
  hours, which I feel like that's what we watch. So yes, and
• 6:09
  one forty nine would be about two and a half so they really get you
• 6:15
  in that third hour. Oh man. Yeah, So so the theatrical cut
• 6:18
  is about an hour shorter. And so I'll kick this over first and foremost.
• 6:24
  You guys, interesting, let's start with you. This is your first
• 6:27
  time encountering it. Did you feel the length of the picture. Did you
• 6:31
  sit there saying I really wish we could watch the theatrical cut, or did
• 6:35
  this feel like an organic film that was running the length that was intended to.
• 6:41
  Oh my god, Oh my god, this was exhausting. I I
• 6:47
  mean, I'm getting out of breath just thinking about it. It was,
• 6:49
  Oh my god, it was. It felt so long. I felt every
• 6:56
  soul crushing minute of this piece. I honestly, you know, like the
• 7:01
  three of us kept making jokes like we kept threatening to do House of Peterson
• 7:05
  for months, and we wanted to do the eighties because there's a lot of
• 7:10
  great Peterson movies in the eighties, and so we're like, okay, if
• 7:13
  we do the eighties, we got to start with dos Boot And all of
• 7:15
  us are like three and a half hours. When are we going to find
• 7:17
  the time, Like, we're all working men, we all have lives,
• 7:21
  we all have multiple children. How on earth are we're going to get a
• 7:25
  three and a half hour movie in there? And so I kept telling my
• 7:29
  wife, I'm like, okay, you don't have to do this with me.
• 7:30
  It's okay, you don't have to watch this with me. And to
• 7:33
  her credit, she gave me two hours. She gave me two hours of
• 7:39
  uninterrupted das Boat and Run half the movie not bad. And then she's like,
• 7:46
  okay, that's it. We're watching Rick and Morty as a palate cleanser
• 7:48
  and we're gonna go to see head and so after that two hours. It's
• 7:53
  one of those films that you can't just have on in the background, Like,
• 7:55
  like I predominantly work from home, I can't have it on in the
• 7:59
  background because I speak very little German. I took I took three years of
• 8:03
  German, and it's all gone out the window, and so you cannot have
• 8:07
  it on in the background. And so I watched a little bit on the
• 8:09
  train, I latched a little bit on my lunch hower, and then I
• 8:13
  got it done. So long story short, to answer your question, good
• 8:18
  lord, not only was the pacing slow and the shots slow, everyone spoke
• 8:26
  like they were trying to fill the time. I just every line was delivered
• 8:35
  that way, and like you're going proc now, was the was the worst?
• 8:39
  Was the worst defender? I love that actor to death. I think
• 8:41
  he's fantastic and everything that he's in, you know, Wait, including Judge
• 8:46
  Dread starring Sylvester Stallone, including Judge Dread, including Air Force one where he
• 8:50
  basically has no lines, and especially in nineteen eighty four as Dune as Duke
• 8:56
  Lato at Tradees. Yeah, all that love him, but he every single
• 9:01
  line that he delivered was soft spoken and delayed, like even some of the
• 9:07
  orders that he was given. It just I really wish we watched the theatrical.
• 9:13
  I kind of wish that I could. I could watch the theatrical to
• 9:16
  get a basis of comparison. But I don't hate myself. I'm not going
• 9:20
  to do that to myself again any time, stopping you Tristan from watching the
• 9:24
  theatrical for your own psyche. But I think we're I think we're I think
• 9:28
  Tristan is tipping his hand there. But Darren, as you come back and
• 9:31
  you revisit it, was this if you watched the even more excited version or
• 9:37
  the theatrical earlier, did you notice a difference in terms of the run time
• 9:41
  here? Did you say, you know, this feels different than the last
• 9:45
  time I watched it. It was so long ago, it was many,
• 9:48
  many years. So I remember generally enjoying the theatrical version that I watched and
• 9:56
  just you know, letting it because this, you know, in college time,
• 9:58
  you got tons of time. You could just say, hey, it's
• 10:01
  a Friday night, we're gonna start the movie at six, and it's gonna
• 10:03
  be done in just a matter of hours, like it's really nothing that big
• 10:07
  of a deal. So yeah, But so overall though, I didn't mind.
• 10:11
  I mean, I didn't mind the pacing because I feel like it's just
• 10:16
  synonymous with daspoot, Like you know what you're getting into. That is what
• 10:22
  this movie is. It is slow, it is long, but it builds
• 10:28
  this sort of just crushingness, indictive of the submarine where you're like, and
• 10:37
  there are big moments that happen, like when they're getting attacked. The thing
• 10:41
  is, though, you'll get attacked and then you'll look at the runtime and
• 10:43
  be like, it's totally been thirty minutes. It feels like it's been so
• 10:48
  much longer. I think, I think they're gonna make it. We have
• 10:50
  about forty five minutes left. But I feel like the action, though,
• 10:56
  is varied enough where yeah, I mean, how many times can you have
• 11:00
  a we're getting hit by depth charges? But they do keep it slightly different
• 11:05
  each time, where different things are going wrong, or like when they are
• 11:09
  stuck on the bottom of the Mediterranean where it's It just made me marvel at
• 11:16
  the perseverance of humanity, because when you are in a tin can and it's
• 11:22
  it's literally just you have to fix it, and it doesn't matter how long
• 11:26
  it takes. You just have to fix it or we are dead. Like
• 11:31
  that is literally what most of the scenes boil down to. I kind of
• 11:35
  want to jump in on that because I didn't want to just be a complete
• 11:39
  utter naysayer at the beginning, because I do want to say that, like
• 11:43
  that scene towards the end, like when they're when they're trying to go through
• 11:46
  Gibraltar, Gibraltar, Gibraltar, Gibraltar, and they're trying to go through the
• 11:52
  strait and then they get they get knocked on their ass. They're on the
• 11:56
  bottom of the strait and the water's coming in, like you know, like
• 12:00
  the pipes are burst and things like nuts and bolts are going around like bullets,
• 12:05
  and you're thinking to yourself, You're like, yeah, we got a
• 12:07
  lot of time left, but at that point, yours just like I don't,
• 12:09
  I don't know if they're gonna make it, Like I honestly don't know
• 12:13
  if they're gonna make it. Like every single step of the way, even
• 12:16
  when they started gaining a little ground, you're like, I don't, I
• 12:20
  honestly don't know. If they're gonna make it. And that was so tense,
• 12:24
  and that was so crazy. That scene was amazing. And then,
• 12:28
  like you said, Darren, they have to get it done. They pump
• 12:31
  out the water, they work on the engines, they change out the bearings,
• 12:35
  and you know, like they're the Angula. Thing was what got me
• 12:39
  because it's like I am literally taking the engines apart while I'm inside and I'm
• 12:46
  hand shaving the bearings. It's like, because you had to, because you
• 12:50
  had no other choice, you had to literally turn the engine room into a
• 12:54
  machine shop. And it just again, I get it. I totally understand
• 12:58
  what they're doing, but my mind is like, we're so modern navy is
• 13:05
  feels so coddled of like, oh, yeah, well we got twenty spares
• 13:07
  over here, or oh, no problem, we're in a convoy and they'll
• 13:11
  just rescue us. I was like, no, it's you are a lone
• 13:15
  boat and the only reason you didn't go, you didn't get crushed is because
• 13:20
  the mediterrane was slightly shallow in that area. That is not a good reason
• 13:22
  to survive. And I think that in terms of reason to survive, because
• 13:30
  obviously this film is decades old at this point. We're not going to worry
• 13:33
  about spoilers if you have or haven't seen it. But as we wrestle with
• 13:37
  that question of whether they're going to make it, I would offer that one.
• 13:43
  I think the film is successful in terms of presenting to you that the
• 13:48
  soldiers on the front lines aren't necessarily consumed with or even aware completely of the
• 13:56
  ideological thing driving them to They have a first officer come aboard and the crew
• 14:03
  sort of sneers at him because he's the ideologue. They even call it out.
• 14:07
  They're like, oh, yeah, okay, this is the guy he's
• 14:09
  in the cause the rest of us were just on a boat and this is
• 14:11
  just what we do. The captain even called him hitler youth. Yes.
• 14:16
  Yeah. And and the first time we meet the other boat captain when he
• 14:22
  throws up all over himself, he starts to insult their feer and stops himself
• 14:30
  because he realizes he's gonna get killed if he keeps going sort of thing.
• 14:35
  So I think the film is successful in presenting that. But what I said
• 14:39
  to one of my kids, given the ending, and Darren, I'll throw
• 14:43
  this to you first. The ending is very nineteen eighties Western cinema. War
• 14:50
  movie, they all die at the end, because well, that's just what
• 14:54
  happens in these things. But I presented to my kid, and I don't
• 14:58
  know if you might agree with this, that the only way for this film
• 15:01
  to end satisfactorially for the audience is for them to die. Because they're members
• 15:09
  of the axis. You cannot give these guys a happy ending. So in
• 15:13
  a sense, the only way you can resolve it is to doom them.
• 15:16
  Do you agree with that or would you have been satisfied with an ending where
• 15:20
  they made it back to port and then carry them that stops and we don't
• 15:22
  see the air attack and the destruction. I feel, I feel you have
• 15:30
  to have them die, not because they are the quote unquote access bad guys.
• 15:37
  I think it is instead saying the statement of but war doesn't care if
• 15:43
  you see yourself as the good guy, and it's going to kill you anyway,
• 15:48
  and it's senseless to a barbaric degree, because at the end of the
• 15:52
  day, you're just trying to kill them. They're just trying to kill you,
• 15:56
  and you're trying to get through it. And yeah, and it's because
• 16:00
  it is said, I mean, you feel like you're like, hell,
• 16:03
  these are all the people we've been rooting for ten minutes ago, and now
• 16:07
  here they are. All they almost made it back. They're not getting back
• 16:10
  to their sweethearts. They're not getting back to their country. You know,
• 16:12
  they're losing the war. And it is a I think, a poignant gut
• 16:18
  punch of like, yeah, not everybody wins, not everybody survives. I
• 16:25
  think it's interesting that you pose that question, John, because I didn't really
• 16:30
  think about it until you ask that question. And I think if we show
• 16:34
  them seeing port from Afar, like seeing port from their binoculars or from the
• 16:42
  periscope or something like that, and then the movie cut right there, flags
• 16:47
  are waving their chair in on the deck, they're really excited, not not
• 16:51
  even that, like, no, not even not even that. Like if
• 16:52
  we just see the port and then like the captain smile, boom credits,
• 16:56
  I think that would work. But showing them go into port smiling, waving,
• 17:03
  celebrating, people throwing roses at them and everything like that, No way
• 17:07
  could we in that way for the reasons that you stated, John, about
• 17:11
  how they're the axis, they're the baddies, they're the enemy, and so
• 17:15
  they can't have a victory. So I think if if the victory was just
• 17:19
  them getting away, it's okay, getting away and celebrating is too far.
• 17:26
  And I know, I know this conversations is going in in a serious route,
• 17:32
  but I have to I have to say this, And I don't know
• 17:34
  what this says about me. I don't know what you guys will think of
• 17:38
  me after saying this. But when I was so drained by the end of
• 17:44
  this movie that when when they got there and they got into the port,
• 17:49
  they're celebrating catching roses. Everybody's happy, and then we hear they air raids
• 17:53
  them signal and then we see the British of fighter plane coming overhead. I
• 18:00
  laughed out loud, like I laughed like a maniac, because I thought it
• 18:06
  was hilarious that they did all that, and they went through all of that,
• 18:11
  and then they just got swept away by the by the Brits. Thought
• 18:15
  it was hilarious, And then it settled in when I'm like, oh wait,
• 18:18
  yeah, Peterson's trying to say, you know, feel futility of war,
• 18:21
  you know, like blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah. But
• 18:22
  yes, so was I alone in that reaction. I didn't laugh. I
• 18:29
  have seen this once before. I'm pretty sure it was the theatrical cut.
• 18:32
  Because it was in college. The only way we could get our hands on
• 18:34
  it was LaserDisc, and you could only watch the LaserDiscs in the library.
• 18:41
  You could not check it out. And you couldn't check it out. You
• 18:45
  had to watch it. You had to watch player at their home, Like,
• 18:48
  why would you check it out? Uh? I mean, if you
• 18:53
  know, I'm sure that there's some weirdo that had a LaserDisc player at that
• 18:57
  point. I'm sure that there's somebody listening to this right now. That's like,
• 19:00
  well, of course I had six of them. But no, I
• 19:03
  didn't have a laser disc player. I'd heard about dost Boat and I said,
• 19:07
  hey, hey, let's watch this. It's on LaserDisc and we can
• 19:10
  get it on the fourth floor of the library. If we watched there and
• 19:14
  all that to say, I guarantee you I would not have talked my friends
• 19:17
  into watching a three and a half hour film. They would have looked at
• 19:19
  me and said, are you out of your gosh darn mind, although they
• 19:22
  would have used stronger language. We only have to swap out the laser dick
• 19:26
  four times. It's totally. Yeah, it was. It was a lot
• 19:30
  of a lot of flipping flipping it, yes, yeah, but I think
• 19:36
  that um coming back to it this time. I didn't remember the ending specifically,
• 19:41
  but the second I saw der Alte the the the old man Jurgen proc
• 19:48
  now look up at the sky, I said, oh, that's right,
• 19:51
  they're gonna get bombed, like I knew what was going to happen. And
• 19:55
  Trista, with what you said about you can't see them coming back and being
• 19:59
  celebrated and every I think the author of the book that the film is based
• 20:04
  on specifically was he he had a problem with the film because he said it
• 20:11
  was basically an action an American action movie interpretation of his novel that's supposed to
• 20:18
  be about the futility and the senselessness of war itself. I would be very
• 20:26
  curious on my end to go back and see the theatrical cut, because that's
• 20:30
  obviously what the author was reacting to. I would argue that director's cut winds
• 20:34
  up being successful because we all got that point. So Darren, theatrical not
• 20:41
  have them dying at the end, Well, no, it has, it
• 20:45
  has the same ending, but obviously obviously with an hour's worth of footage cut
• 20:48
  out. There's a lot more action and a lot less character build. Yeah,
• 20:53
  there's there has to be a lot less like of them just sitting around
• 20:56
  getting scurvy, and more depth charges and crabs. They also got crabs CBS,
• 21:06
  which is horrifying. I spoke with my wife like as we were watching
• 21:11
  this, I truly believe this, and I'm not just like if I if
• 21:17
  I somehow damned myself and I wound up in hell and Satan came to me
• 21:23
  and said, here is the eternal torment that I have laid out for you,
• 21:27
  Tristan Ruddel, it would be being in this movie, like it would
• 21:33
  be being on that boat with those guys on this mission for all time.
• 21:38
  That every single aspect of that truly feels like eternal damnation to me, Like
• 21:45
  being underwater, being cramped with that many smelly, stinky, disgusting men,
• 21:52
  you know, having rotted food all around me, Like thinking that you're going
• 21:55
  to get a depth charge to the face at any moment. All of that,
• 21:59
  every single moment, an inch of that felt like eternal damnation. And
• 22:06
  that if that was the goal, I think I think they very much succeeded
• 22:10
  in that, so let's let's let's stick with that. Because to get that
• 22:17
  feeling of claustrophobia, the director of photography came up with a very special airflex
• 22:22
  camera with a two gyro stabilizers, so it was a lot leaner, a
• 22:27
  lot lighter than the typical steadicam so that he could run through the hallways with
• 22:33
  them while not being I mean, obviously, these sets are built within an
• 22:38
  inch of their lives, and you need to be able to move very nimbly,
• 22:42
  and there are a lot of really nimble documentary style camera shots in this
• 22:47
  Darren. The camera work has been praised on this. Do you similarly praise
• 22:52
  it? Did you like, did the style of camera work effectively make you
• 22:59
  feel like you were in this boat or did it draw any attention to itself?
• 23:03
  Did it interfere with its own lighting or anything like that. No,
• 23:07
  I really I really enjoyed the camera work. I praise it the fact that
• 23:11
  I feel like I actually learned the layout of the ship, Like I could
• 23:17
  tell that, oh, this is the engine compartment, and then there's the
• 23:21
  officer's mess and then there's the conning tower, you know, main stage,
• 23:25
  and there's the torpedo. You know at the front and like it started to
• 23:30
  feel because it all looks the same at the very beginning. It's very hard
• 23:33
  to tell where you are, even more so in the very very beginning because
• 23:37
  everything is jammed with provisions that are sticking out of everywhere. But no,
• 23:44
  I love the camera work. It's just and it is a lot about camera.
• 23:49
  There are so many shots where it is just on the captain and we're
• 23:53
  seeing his piercing blue eyes and his sweat as he's making. It really makes
• 24:00
  you feel on how much of being on a U boat is just listening to
• 24:06
  the cat He is guiding everything. He's making every decision, every timing judgment
• 24:11
  call, and then everyone else's job is just to do what he says and
• 24:15
  carry out his orders. I mean there was there was barely any discussion of
• 24:21
  anything of like, oh should we do this? No, we just listened
• 24:23
  to the captain. He is going to get us through the old man of
• 24:26
  the sea. Yeah, I h Tristan, you know, back over to
• 24:32
  you, did you feel that the camera work was especially innovative or did you
• 24:36
  feel any sort of did you feel that it was ostentatious in some way?
• 24:41
  Do you feel that it didn't accomplish its goal. Do you feel that the
• 24:45
  camera work got in the way of the performance in any sense? No,
• 24:48
  I thought it was I thought it was overall amazing. I thought it was
• 24:51
  truly fantastic because they were able to do so much with so little, Like
• 24:56
  there was never a time when you feel there was too much. One two
• 25:00
  shot over the shoulder, one two shot over the shoulder, one two shot
• 25:03
  over the shoulder. So many boring movies do that where they have uninspired camera
• 25:10
  work, where like you look a lot of if you look at a lot
• 25:12
  of rom coms, it's pretty much just two people sitting down or two people
• 25:17
  standing there, they get one shot of them, one shot of the other
• 25:19
  person, may be thrown a wide repeat one two, one two, one
• 25:23
  two. This never really did that, and if it did it, it
• 25:26
  didn't do it that long. And that's really really hard to do with such
• 25:30
  a small set. I mean, I think we've we've referenced this before,
• 25:36
  but if you watch, if you watch Hitchcock's Lifeboat and the camera work and
• 25:42
  selection that he did for that, that's I mean, that's next level innovation
• 25:48
  with trying to not get the audience board on your camera selection. Just one
• 25:53
  wrung down, I would say, is dust boat. And but the only
• 26:00
  thing that really took me out of it was there was a side shot.
• 26:03
  It was lockdown side shot outside of the sub when they were standing on top,
• 26:08
  and it was clearly rear projection and it was clearly someone just throwing a
• 26:14
  bucket of water on their faces. Yeah, And I'm just like, really,
• 26:18
  you have all these fantastic special effects, sound effects in camera work,
• 26:22
  and then you it completely takes you out of it when they're in the tower,
• 26:26
  right, and they're just when they're in the tower wave because that's literally
• 26:29
  what it is. It's them in a tower on a in a tub,
• 26:33
  you know, like in a sound stage. Yeah, And it's just it's
• 26:36
  just and I understand. I was just like, yeah, you know,
• 26:37
  like they have fifteen million budget, most of it went to building the U
• 26:41
  boat. I understand there's limitations and everything, but it's just like you go
• 26:45
  to a wine shot of an actual boat in water and it's going up and
• 26:48
  down, up and down like crazy through a storm, and then you go
• 26:52
  to the tight and it's completely locked down. That's true. Maybe a little
• 26:55
  more camera jiggle to feel like you're on the open sea or even just put
• 27:00
  that that tower on some sort of gimbal and you just have Okay, everybody's
• 27:06
  exactly exactly like the Millennium Falcon cockpit. You got guys just out of your
• 27:10
  out of frame like rocking the thing. So everything, it doesn't even have
• 27:12
  to be on the gimbal, don't nothing even that fancy, just like you
• 27:15
  said, just like, let's get some plywood and just rock it back and
• 27:18
  forth. It's just it was really unfortunate because it was so stellar. Besides
• 27:22
  that, I mean, I I agree with that and what I thought.
• 27:26
  I kept trying to solve it in my head, aside from okay, well
• 27:30
  they obviously couldn't. They obviously didn't build it that way, and they shoot
• 27:34
  it. I you know, I'll put out there. I'd love to get
• 27:38
  your your take on this. I think if they even just brought the camera
• 27:41
  in a little bit tighter on those shots, if they just zoomed in a
• 27:45
  little bit like, it would have sold it better because you wouldn't have seen
• 27:51
  the bottom part of the tower because it was distracting because you kept looking down.
• 27:56
  You're like, I can tell that's not moving, and because even if
• 28:00
  you were, if you were tighter and you didn't have as much stem from
• 28:03
  the tower, and you were a little bit tighter, and you just had
• 28:07
  a little bit of lip of the what. I'm sure naval people are screaming
• 28:11
  at us, because I have no idea what it's called. Yes, we're
• 28:14
  a very popular show with naval officers. Hey, you don't know, Like
• 28:18
  if it was tighter, you your your brain would think, oh, the
• 28:22
  camera is a lockdown on the sub. So the fact that you're not rocking
• 28:26
  back and forth is because the camera is with the individuals and not because if
• 28:33
  you're far away from the shots of the forward or backward. It was always
• 28:37
  from the side, like it was always from the side. There was no
• 28:41
  variation. It was always from the site. It's like they had one day
• 28:45
  to get all those scenes done and they're like, just lock the camera down,
• 28:48
  say the lines, throw the water on them, and then let's move
• 28:52
  on. That's what it felt like. But if they did it tighter,
• 28:55
  it yeah, I think I think John, I think that's a very simple
• 28:57
  solution. Well, there you go. I gotta get my time machine go
• 29:02
  back, and then also maybe make sure no director's cut gets done so that
• 29:06
  Tristan can stay with it for the full two and a half hours. But
• 29:08
  speaking of the director's cut, coming back to that, because you know we're
• 29:12
  talking about the technical stuff. This is a director's cut restoration overseen by Peterson,
• 29:18
  and it comes about much later, but it comes out I think in
• 29:23
  ninety seven, where there's a very other special edition that comes out in that
• 29:27
  year as well, and you have a director comeback oversee this, and the
• 29:34
  film by this point is firmly ensconced as an eternal classic, a pre eminent
• 29:41
  submarine film, an absolute masterclass, Academy Awards, German Film Awards, even
• 29:49
  it was nominated for Outstanding Foreign Language Film and the Japan Academy Film Prize,
• 29:55
  like, it's all over the world. People love this film, Darren.
• 30:00
  Given that fact, why do you think that director's cut is done? If
• 30:06
  everybody loves the film, if it's established as a classic, what do you
• 30:10
  think motivates Peterson to go back and release a director's cut? I feel,
• 30:15
  like, you know, in director's cuts in general, there's there's often a
• 30:18
  couple of different reasons. Sometimes it's not really any longer, it's just like
• 30:23
  different like little tweaks here and there, and sometimes like luth Lucas it's like,
• 30:29
  we're not necessarily again making it longer, We're just adding another layer because
• 30:33
  the technology wasn't there. This one is obviously making it longer. It's the
• 30:37
  kind of the third type. And maybe I don't know it maybe again from
• 30:42
  the source material from obviously when they were shooting it. I mean, yeah,
• 30:48
  the theatrical is long, but can you imagine the assembly cut? This
• 30:52
  thing probably was like a six or seven hour assembly cut, and they're like,
• 30:56
  how do we carve a story out of at and just being like,
• 31:02
  hey, I'm getting a chance to restore it. Maybe it started like that.
• 31:04
  Maybe it started as, oh, hey, as we're coming up this
• 31:07
  movie, it's it's kind of degrading a bit. It's been a couple of
• 31:11
  decades. We're going to restore it. Do you want to do a pass
• 31:15
  on a director's edition? And of course yeah, it's like, well,
• 31:19
  what more can I put into it? And maybe again I'm all speculating on
• 31:25
  all of this, but also, like we were talking earlier about the action,
• 31:29
  he feel, you know, but what better way than to put more
• 31:33
  person moments in there. Although at the end of the day though, and
• 31:38
  at granted it's been a long time since i'd watched the theatrical, I cannot
• 31:45
  tell you what was new, And I don't know if even if I watched
• 31:48
  the theatrical and a week later watched the director's cut, I still don't know
• 31:51
  if I could probably tell you what was different. It probably was just longer,
• 31:56
  just more of everything. That's the vibe I'm getting. It's not like,
• 32:00
  oh, yeah, this character was told to cut out, or oh
• 32:04
  this whole sequence with the dive, you know, the depth charges. We
• 32:07
  didn't have that in the theatrical. I feel like everything was just elongated.
• 32:10
  People will probably hate this comparison, but I would argue that this probably winds
• 32:19
  up something like the Ultimate Edition of Batman Versus Superman, and I refuse to
• 32:23
  say this is just V. It's always gonna be versus, Okay, everybody,
• 32:25
  that's what the V means. So with Batmans, With Batman Versus Superman
• 32:32
  the Ultimate Edition, there's thirty more minutes of footage. But some of that
• 32:38
  thirty more minutes of footage is as simple as clarifying some stuff that happens earlier
• 32:45
  in the film and giving some characters a little bit more of a beat when
• 32:51
  they're having dialogue back and forth. And I've frequently said that the Ultimate Edition
• 32:55
  of Batman Versus Superman. I don't know why they didn't release that one the
• 33:00
  theaters because I hated I can't all caps underlining bold font. I came out
• 33:07
  of the theatrical cut hating that movie so badly, and then I washed the
• 33:13
  Ultimate Edition and I said, oh, oh, well, actually I kind
• 33:15
  of like this. This works a lot better. And you wouldn't think that
• 33:21
  that simple thirty minutes of time would have made a difference, But the difference
• 33:25
  would think that we know many movies that work, but the lightly overcut that
• 33:30
  really should The ABYSS comes to mind, of course, but with this,
• 33:35
  it's a beloved classic before this point, well, it's like to your point,
• 33:38
  John, with that, like so many people think like, oh,
• 33:40
  thirty minutes of extra footage. They think like, oh, is that like
• 33:45
  three ten minute scenes that they're adding it? Like, no, it's it's
• 33:47
  normally what you're talking about, Like it's just spreading that out throughout the entire
• 33:52
  film. But with with Dust Dust bote Um, directors don't care, like
• 33:59
  when you have a real attention when when when when a movie is your baby
• 34:04
  and you were told by people not you to cut something out or do something
• 34:09
  different than what you want to do that sticks with you, regardless if it's
• 34:15
  a success or not. Like I guarantee you Peterson didn't didn't care if like
• 34:22
  they say, like, oh, you can do a director's cut later on,
• 34:25
  but you know, the theatrical cut made lots of money and people love
• 34:28
  it. He he clearly he jumped on it because it was a chance to
• 34:34
  show his vision of the movie. Doesn't matter if it made money, doesn't
• 34:37
  matter if people liked it. It's his vision of the film that he that
• 34:42
  he wants other people to see, and that's the most important thing, and
• 34:46
  not where it is in the zeitgeist, not even if it's like when people
• 34:50
  say like, oh, yeah, this was like when we when we did
• 34:52
  this episode of Star Trek, we really were thinking about dust Boat, you
• 34:55
  know, like you know, like you know that happens all the time.
• 34:58
  Like people like like this was our When they say this was our submarine episode,
• 35:01
  they're talking about Dspoot, They're they're talking about that and any other modern
• 35:07
  k nineteen Widowmaker, Red October, everything gets compared to this. It is
• 35:13
  the seminal work on the subject. I'm glad I'm glad you bring up Red
• 35:17
  October because we have watched Red October here on how much space and for activities
• 35:22
  in that ship. Oh my gosh, it's like, my gosh, modern
• 35:25
  modern subs are like luxury liners compared to they so are compared to the U
• 35:31
  Boat. Yes, but let's go ahead and let's embrace that. Everybody loves
• 35:36
  Red October. Darren, you bring up Red October. Let's just go head
• 35:39
  to head right here. What makes Red October more or is it equally as
• 35:45
  successful? Is it more successful as it's a little easier with the English.
• 35:51
  But I would say one of the things that they both do well is you
• 35:58
  get to know a lot of the characters. Like I mean, there's a
• 36:00
  big crew on each of these ships, and I feel like in dos Boot,
• 36:06
  I know almost every one of them. I know what their hopes and
• 36:08
  dreams are. I mean looking at postcards of Snow. I mean that scene
• 36:14
  was amazing. Yeah, I know I know them all by name. You
• 36:16
  got the brows guys. Maybe I don't remember their name, but um,
• 36:23
  I love the part in the Red October where they all have run to the
• 36:25
  bow to make the ship go down faster. Because that first of all,
• 36:30
  like what are they doing? And then I'm like, oh, they're literally
• 36:31
  shifting the weight. Of course that's what they're doing. Um, but no,
• 36:37
  I think, gosh, it's it's hard in comparisoning because I would almost
• 36:44
  say the greatest strength of DOS Boot at its core is that it pretty much
• 36:52
  all takes place in the boat. We are not jumping around, we're not
• 36:55
  seeing the Allied command making plans and hone it down. There's no counterpart to
• 37:01
  our captain hunting him because that's not war. It's not a video game.
• 37:07
  We don't have cut scenes, we don't have radar. You know, in
• 37:10
  our first person shooter, it's oh, I didn't see that giant ship there.
• 37:15
  It's gonna now torpedo at us and we got to dive Like that is
• 37:19
  real war, and I think that you lose that, not for a negative,
• 37:24
  it's just different. In Red October and Red October. You know,
• 37:29
  we are bouncing back and forth between the Dallas and the October and just seeing
• 37:36
  this cat and mouse game. There is no cat and mouse game. This
• 37:37
  is mouse game. There's only one side that we are seeing, which I
• 37:45
  think is one of the things that gives das Boot its flavor is because of
• 37:50
  that, I think it would not destroy that's a bit harsh, but it
• 37:52
  would fundamentally change what this movie is. If you were intercutting with like an
• 37:59
  American counter part hunting him. That's a and that's been told in other submarine
• 38:04
  movies. Well done, but that's not doss Boot. So I don't know
• 38:07
  if that answers your question. But as some of the some of the comparisons,
• 38:10
  I mean, it kind of does. I mean Red October I think
• 38:15
  learns the lesson that if you're going to do in an engaging action movie,
• 38:21
  you have to show outside the boat. Whereas this, I think that's that's
• 38:24
  what I was gonna That's exactly what I was gonna say. Else like this
• 38:28
  was all about the perspective of the captain, the perspective of the crew,
• 38:34
  Like we don't leave that perspective, we don't go beyond what they see,
• 38:37
  kind of like in Children of Men Um with Um Clive with Clive Owen like
• 38:47
  that, like you don't see anything, you don't know anything, he doesn't
• 38:51
  know. It's the one with the eyebrows, Tristan just like me Um and
• 38:54
  he's, yeah, you don't see anything that he doesn't see you don't know
• 38:58
  anything, he doesn't know, and the camera never leaves him except for one
• 39:01
  time, it just stays behind for a minute. And this is very much
• 39:06
  that, and I appreciate movies like that. I really like that because even
• 39:08
  when they see the other guy in the other U boat, we don't get
• 39:10
  a reverse shot. We don't, we don't, we don't get a reversal
• 39:15
  from him. Can barely see him waving just enough to make him out,
• 39:17
  and you're like, oh, what's his story? Nope, he's going that
• 39:21
  way, We're going this way. Oh, fun fact about that. Some
• 39:24
  of the wide shots with the with the smaller model, it's a modified Barbies
• 39:30
  on top literal barbies. Hey, you can kind of tell. You can
• 39:37
  kind of tell, but the budget shows through. Sometimes sometimes it peaks through.
• 39:43
  It kind of peaks. The peaks through. Better Barbies are better than
• 39:46
  like sticks, and it's obviously not a human at least it was the right
• 39:50
  silhouette. Speaking speaking of those Barbies and those effects shots, um we have
• 39:55
  of course the sinking of the convoy frame would that they double back to and
• 40:01
  the torpedo one last time, and they're they're reveling in their victory and Tristan,
• 40:07
  because we have already touched on the fact that these they work for the
• 40:10
  bad guys and they're they're doing bad guy things and everything. There's a very
• 40:17
  interesting human moment where they ask when they see guys on the boat jumping off,
• 40:25
  the captain asks why weren't they rescued and then makes a horrific decision to
• 40:32
  back away, but one that I would argue, you can understand he has
• 40:37
  to make it because he barely has the provisions for the men that he has,
• 40:42
  so to take more people on dooms everyone. Do you think that that
• 40:46
  goes a good way to show that the captain further reinforced I should say that
• 40:52
  the captain is not you know, he's he's not pro Nazi. He's just
• 40:57
  a guy on captain and it's like he but he makes a decision that's just
• 41:04
  awful. Do you think that humanizes him enough that you feel better about being
• 41:10
  with him, that you realize he's not a monster. Or do you think
• 41:14
  that that scene doesn't play particularly well? No, I think the scene plays
• 41:17
  really well. I really do. I really like that scene because you feel
• 41:22
  the frustration because even though they were the ones like you understand it even though
• 41:28
  it's contradictory, you understand it because it's war. It's war. It's not
• 41:36
  personal. It's war, and there's rules of war. And they were the
• 41:42
  ones who caused that situation. They were the ones who shot, who shot
• 41:45
  the convoy, who shot the boat. And then they're not like they're not
• 41:51
  like getting up and like picking off prisoners one by one with a revolver,
• 41:54
  you know, like they're they're just scene that and you can see the terror
• 41:59
  in the eyes all of them are are are hit emotionally, like even though
• 42:02
  they killed way more people than that than what they saw jump off, it's
• 42:07
  different because they're not face to face. They're not they didn't do it in
• 42:12
  cold blood. It's war, and you can, like, I honestly loved
• 42:17
  that the captain was was frustrated and like you could see that he was angry.
• 42:22
  He was angry at the Allies for not taking care of their own men
• 42:25
  because he knew that he couldn't do anything to help them. And I there's
• 42:30
  zero blame, zero blame, you know, I mean, I mean besides
• 42:36
  the fact that he caused it, but zero blame from his perspective from backing
• 42:40
  away, because what is he gonna do. What is he gonna do?
• 42:43
  He can't keep them on the boat. The boat's too small, They have
• 42:45
  no they don't have any food. Now they're gonna sabotage it. They're gonna
• 42:50
  like there's there's no buddy. That's a win scenario, But there's actually a
• 42:52
  real, a real world thing. I read a book about the USS Indianapolis,
• 42:57
  which, as everybody knows from the movie Jaws, was sunk and a
• 43:02
  bunch of people, you know, survived, and they they floated in the
• 43:07
  water, and Robert Shaw's character, as an absolutely spell binding moment in that
• 43:12
  film, talked about floating in the water and those eyes, those dull's eyes,
• 43:16
  that kind of rolled back up a little bit. But when I read
• 43:22
  about that actual historical incident, there was a bit of a scandal, very
• 43:30
  quietly handled and kept quiet, you know, kept very quiet, because the
• 43:37
  Japanese boat that hit the Indianapolis did not pick up the prisoners, did not
• 43:43
  pick up the survivors basically, and when peace was declared, there were a
• 43:50
  lot of sailors that were very, very very upset that nobody made any effort
• 43:57
  to save them, and that's why they lost so many more people floating in
• 44:00
  the water that basically they felt that the Japanese could have come and rescued them
• 44:06
  in that moment. And so, Darren, do you think that, given
• 44:10
  that historical knowledge, do you see a bit more of an understanding as to
• 44:20
  why that historical incident went the way that it did, or do you think
• 44:23
  that this is a you know, this is just one of those things where
• 44:30
  a captain is forced to say, look, that's collateral damage. And I
• 44:32
  wish I could do more, but I can't because I have to think about
• 44:36
  the people under my command. No, I think. I think I echo
• 44:39
  everything that Tristan said, you know, the of it being just at war,
• 44:44
  and I mean it is a little it is the choice of going back
• 44:47
  and then re sink like they didn't need to sink it more, it would
• 44:51
  eventually sink. But I like how they play it where up until that moment
• 44:58
  after he's fired the torpedoes, like doesn't know, Like I get. I
• 45:01
  totally get the feeling that if he had seen men on that ship before firing
• 45:07
  torpedoes, he would not have fired, like you just would have backed up
• 45:10
  because that torpedo causing the then immediate sinking of the tanker is what caused that
• 45:17
  moment. But yeah, like Tristan said, it is a human moment of
• 45:23
  just regret of the things that wars make us do is not you know,
• 45:30
  it's it's not played for lasts. It's not played for oh we got him,
• 45:34
  Like yeah, even as it's burning before they see people, they're kind
• 45:38
  of horrified. It's like I kind of I kind of put myself in the
• 45:44
  thought of you know, Okay, it's the forties. Like you you have
• 45:46
  cameras, you have ways to record your life, but not like we have
• 45:52
  today, where almost everything is remembered and documented. That's one of those moments
• 45:57
  that even without taking a picture, that's earned in those men's memories, watching
• 46:01
  the ocean on fire as this, you know, and you're hearing the creaking
• 46:07
  of the broken hull under like, that's a moment that is staying with them
• 46:13
  for the rest of their lives. Until the last scene. But yeah,
• 46:17
  so I feel like it's probably one of the best scenes as far as establishing
• 46:23
  the humanity of not just the captain but also the crew because they all act
• 46:29
  like that. No one's you know, they're asking the captain what to do,
• 46:32
  but no one's like, oh, we should do this, Like they
• 46:35
  just they listened to it. They're like, it's your call. So in
• 46:40
  terms of things that stick with you, there are a lot of things that
• 46:45
  that stick with audiences after the theatrical cut is released, and obviously we get
• 46:49
  the director's cut, we get them mini series release, we get all these
• 46:53
  sorts of things. There is a thing about the soundtrack where in the soundtrack
• 46:59
  there was an actual there was a German rave group called You ninety six that
• 47:04
  created a remixed techno version of the theme song in nineteen ninety one. And
• 47:08
  I remember a friend of mine, a friend of mine in the nineties was
• 47:15
  stationed in West Germany. Well he wasn't. His dad was stationed in West
• 47:19
  Germany when the song was big. So when we did watch Dost Bolt in
• 47:24
  college, he related the story that he knew it because the song was a
• 47:31
  huge hit, and he like he laughed when he heard the theme song because
• 47:37
  it's like da no no no, no, no no no dos Bolt,
• 47:39
  and like he would just sit there and it's like burned in my brain.
• 47:44
  All that to come back around and say, given that surprising revelation that it
• 47:49
  was in sconsin popular culture for so long, Tristan, you know I love
• 47:54
  to ask about the score. What did you think of the score? But
• 48:00
  Klaus Dolginger, you know I have an issue with synth that tries to not
• 48:07
  sound like synth, and this was no different I it was. The notes
• 48:15
  were cool, but the sound was horrible. I hated this soundtrack. I
• 48:19
  thought the score was terrible because it was probably the worst example of a synth
• 48:25
  trying not to sound like synth. And I have no forgiveness for that.
• 48:31
  I can't. I can't stand it. John you I know you. You
• 48:35
  have talked about you and I have talked personally and also publicly about how you
• 48:38
  don't have as much of an issue as I do with it. I do
• 48:43
  not, oh man, Yeah I did. I did not like it.
• 48:46
  I think that the film music, as it would have been called, was
• 48:52
  too repetitive. It was too reliant on just replaying the same theme. Now,
• 49:00
  let's go to a movie we all three of us love, like we
• 49:06
  all know it, because every time the music que came, that was the
• 49:08
  music cue. But let's go to, for instance, a movie we all
• 49:13
  love, nineteen eighty nine's Batman, which has Batman's theme baked into like every
• 49:19
  five minutes of the film. But it never feels stale or repetitive. I
• 49:24
  would argue that the music here, While I wouldn't call it stale, it's
• 49:30
  too repetitive. Every time they dive, the theme goes every and it's never
• 49:36
  a different version of the theme. It's just oh, it's the boat theme.
• 49:40
  Oh, it's the captain theme. Oh. Almost as if they were
• 49:44
  just hitting a button. Okay, this is the theme button. We're just
• 49:46
  going to hit this every every time. Darren, I'm guessing all three of
• 49:51
  us are in sync on this or in synth. As Tristan would say,
• 49:55
  no, I think you're right. I mean, I would say, even
• 50:00
  though it is a weak score, I think the strongest aspect of this movie
• 50:05
  is the times it's not used. Because there's a lot of times that you
• 50:08
  do have no music. It is deathly quiet. You're hearing the drip drip
• 50:13
  of the you know, the slow leak into the boat, and that's way
• 50:17
  more impactful. I mean, I don't want to hear, you know as
• 50:21
  the uh. I mean, yeah, you need music. You need music
• 50:24
  in a film. I don't want a silent movie in that regard. But
• 50:29
  when they're in those quiet moments, I don't want them to hit the play
• 50:34
  the sound, play, the score, the theme moment. So I do
• 50:37
  applaud them for their their limited use in that regard, but yeah, every
• 50:43
  time they do use it, it is repetitive. The one the one bit
• 50:47
  of forgiveness I will extend to it here in the director's cut is I have
• 50:52
  a feeling that Klaus Doldinger composed well, he composed music for a two and
• 51:01
  a half hour film, and then when they released a three and a half
• 51:06
  hour film that yeah, Peterson may have sat there and said no, no,
• 51:09
  no, no, just just reuse that track and just like probably what
• 51:14
  they had to do. Yeah, I just I have that sort of feeling
• 51:17
  about it. Just call it a hunch that they that they didn't have.
• 51:23
  It wasn't like a Trent Resner and Atticus Finch walking up to David Fincher and
• 51:29
  saying, here's four thousand hours of music. Have fun spotting it. You
• 51:34
  know. I think there was probably a limit and they just said, ah,
• 51:36
  let's just throw it in here. It's fine, it's fine. Um,
• 51:39
  So with that, and this might tip off what we're about to get
• 51:45
  to with our ratings and everything, and Darren, I'll throw it to you
• 51:50
  first. There is in fact a sequel of the same name that is a
• 51:54
  television series. Just reading about that, Yeah, I read about that too.
• 51:59
  I also some of the content within it. Holy crap, there's some
• 52:04
  grim, gruesome stuff they put in that TV show. I have not read
• 52:09
  a whole lot about the TV show I thought. When I first saw notices
• 52:15
  about it, I was like, Oh, they're redoing, they're rebooting it.
• 52:16
  I said, oh, jj Abrams, he's at work in the German
• 52:19
  cinema now. But I gotta ask, you know, Darren, after viewing
• 52:27
  this director's cut of Doss Bolt, would you want to watch the sequel series?
• 52:34
  I mean from yeah, the limited bit i've read. It's obviously not
• 52:37
  about the same characters because they die, so you can't. It's not like
• 52:42
  and then somehow in this story they lived and we tell this their tale as
• 52:45
  it continues. Um. Not really, I really have no desire to see
• 52:51
  it. It's like it's it's kind of just writing the coat tails in a
• 52:57
  way, like it's just telling more of the same story or maybe another boat
• 53:00
  or another, but it's not this story. Like, I really don't see
• 53:05
  how it could improve either. What I've watched already or extend it even more.
• 53:12
  So, Uh yeah, I don't. I don't feel that's necessary.
• 53:16
  Again, maybe in book form, because I think it was originally a novel.
• 53:21
  In the well, there there was a there was a sequel book in
• 53:24
  nineteen ninety five. Because the original film is based on a book. There
• 53:28
  was a sequel book in nineteen ninety five called De Festung And what does that
• 53:34
  mean? I tried to look it up, but I didn't look it up.
• 53:37
  I actually I was happy with myself because I too, Tristan took some
• 53:42
  German and there were bits where I could understand what they were saying or what
• 53:47
  was written. I got alarm. I understood that that was that was pretty
• 53:51
  straightforward. It's pretty straightforward. That means fortress, Yeah, fortress, but
• 53:55
  it is um it is interesting, Tristan, would you want to watch a
• 54:00
  sequel to this? Would you want to watch this sequel series that they're talking
• 54:05
  about? No, not at all, No, no, no. So
• 54:08
  I mean the thing is, that's pretty authoritative, so we usually save the
• 54:14
  person whereas the first time they've seen it, we will save the rating for
• 54:16
  the end. But I feel like it's going to take us out on a
• 54:20
  down note. So I'm making the decision here to let's start with Tristan's rating
• 54:27
  because but but before we do, we're gonna do something a little different.
• 54:30
  Right here, Darren, right here, in front of his face, in
• 54:34
  front of the audience. I want to do a little betting pool here.
• 54:37
  I'm betting that mister Riddell is coming in at a solid one. Where do
• 54:42
  you think he's coming in with? No, I don't believe it would be
• 54:45
  a one. I think Tristan and I'm talking like he's not even here.
• 54:49
  But I feel like Tristan also understands the impact of this as a movie,
• 54:54
  and I cannot see him just giving it a one, even if he every
• 55:00
  minute. I mean, his wife watched half of it, so that's something.
• 55:01
  But but no, I will stop talking because I actually want to hear
• 55:07
  what Tristan has. No, No, you have to you have to log
• 55:08
  a guess. I'm not going to all you said if he gave it a
• 55:13
  one and I said no, but you mean, what do I think he
• 55:15
  gets? What do you think? Yes? Uh, somewhere between a two
• 55:21
  and a half and a three. No. No, no, yeah,
• 55:23
  we're not going down to that that that scale yet. So you gonna say
• 55:25
  two and a half. You gotta walk in sure, all right, I
• 55:29
  don't particular care because he'll give his vote and I'll give my vote. I
• 55:34
  know. I just want to see I say one, you say two and
• 55:36
  a half. Tristan, who was right two and a half. Ah,
• 55:40
  you're doing that just to spite me. It was gonna be a one.
• 55:44
  I guessed it and then you this is just to spite me. I want
• 55:46
  to go on. I've been podcasting with Tristan a long time. I could
• 55:51
  tell I have this five though. I just know it wasn't a full guess,
• 55:54
  but I was like, I could not see him giving it. I
• 55:57
  say, his heart tells him it's a one, but he doesn't want to
• 56:00
  feel like he cheated the film in some way. But everything he said,
• 56:04
  I say it is. But it's fine. It's fine, it's fine.
• 56:06
  Give your reason, John. You should you should know better, you should
• 56:08
  know better. I've I don't. I rarely give ones. I rarely give
• 56:13
  ones though, because like ones is like Walmart, beIN crap, that was
• 56:19
  the five I'm getting. No, this is not. I'm sorry that I
• 56:22
  gave that Conquest of Paradise. We all gave that ones. Yeah, we
• 56:25
  all gave that one well deserved. Even though we were talking for fifty seven
• 56:29
  minutes. I feel like there's so much more to talk about, because there's
• 56:32
  a lot more things that I wanted to say in the positive route, where
• 56:38
  I mean, I'm glad that we talked about the cinematography because that that truly
• 56:42
  was the best thing for me, was the cinematography and the the feeling like
• 56:47
  when the scenes actually did have action, when something actually happened, I thought
• 56:52
  that was really cool and I thought that was really well done and it was
• 56:58
  really interesting. And when they went after the caravan, or when they were
• 57:01
  evading some of the British ships, or when they were you know, getting
• 57:07
  depth charged, or towards towards the end in the third act, when they
• 57:12
  were having to rebuild the ship parts. That was that was my favorite part
• 57:15
  of the film. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was really well
• 57:21
  done. And like I said, I was like, I feel like if
• 57:22
  I watched the theatrical version, I probably would give this a much higher score.
• 57:25
  I probably would, And I think, when when I have a little
• 57:30
  bit more distance from from this experience, I will go back and watch the
• 57:35
  theatrical cut. And do a good comparison, because I do believe to hear
• 57:39
  that that would be really interesting. I know I'm repeating myself here, but
• 57:44
  I truly believe that the thick theatrical cut is for people like me who,
• 57:50
  you know, like hate the idea of being on a sub who just absolutely
• 57:53
  loathed the idea. And but this was just way too long. It was
• 57:57
  way too long. And I'm okay with long movies. I really like there's
• 58:00
  a lot of like I am watching them, the four and a half hour
• 58:07
  cut of Zack Snyder's Justice League, you know, like I I brilliant film,
• 58:13
  love it to death. Yeah, I'm wanting This is probably like the
• 58:15
  fourth time I've watched it, and so it's I have no problem with long
• 58:19
  films. It's just has to be the pacing has to be something. And
• 58:23
  I understand that people are like, oh, but you feel like you're in
• 58:27
  a submarine. I'm like, yeah, I do feel like I'm on a
• 58:30
  submarine. I don't like that feeling. But this is but John, you,
• 58:37
  I'm sorry, Darren, You are right about about why I rated it
• 58:42
  into two and a half. Is that even if my enjoyment was that or
• 58:45
  lower, I can't knock the impact that this film has made. I mean,
• 58:50
  like this, this made an impact. This was a part of the
• 58:52
  zeitgeist. People compare it to this film, and so I would be it
• 58:55
  would be foolish of me to rate this something lower than In two and a
• 58:59
  half, just because of my enjoyment level. But there's so much of the
• 59:02
  like it's just I basically I would love to cut this movie myself and see
• 59:07
  how that compares the theatrical version, because I feel like so much a summer
• 59:13
  of your life. You could do it if it take a while, But
• 59:16
  like, there's so much of the intro that doesn't need to be there.
• 59:19
  There's so much of the longing gazes and just the like the sitting there doing
• 59:22
  nothing, and just there's so much that could be cut and removed. But
• 59:28
  and then you know, like some of the some of the special effects and
• 59:31
  some of the outward shots that really take you out of it. And so
• 59:35
  I just I don't find this an enjoyable film. And also one big thing
• 59:38
  that I didn't really have a chance to talk about no one going along here
• 59:43
  is I never connected with these characters. Not once, not a single time,
• 59:46
  did I ever connect with these characters, not a single one, And
• 59:51
  this could be my own brutish American in me. I don't know, and
• 59:57
  it maybe I may be pigheaded, I may be too black and white.
• 1:00:00
  I'm very, very willing to accept that. But every single time they met
• 1:00:05
  danger, I'm like, good, I hope they die. Every single time
• 1:00:07
  I was just like, good, drown die freaking Nazis, you know,
• 1:00:12
  Like every single time, I was like, good, they're dead. And
• 1:00:15
  when when we actually got to the ending, I was like, cool,
• 1:00:17
  they died. They should have. That's that's just my perspective. And maybe
• 1:00:22
  because we're recording this on Memorial Day, I don't know, but that's my
• 1:00:27
  perspective through this entire film. And maybe because I'm too obtuse, I don't
• 1:00:30
  know, but I was not able to connect with this film. It was
• 1:00:35
  too long. There's too grueling. Two and a half. Darren, Well,
• 1:00:42
  yeah, let's uh ten degrees up on that forward bow as we head
• 1:00:46
  through. No. I feel gosh this movie. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:00:52
  we could talk even more about it because there's so much to speak of.
• 1:00:54
  I you know, we'd mentioned before recording. I love the fact that I
• 1:01:00
  didn't realize until reading about it that the actors dubbed themselves because they couldn't use
• 1:01:05
  any of the audio on purpose because of the camera and the other sounds,
• 1:01:08
  so they recorded their own dubbing, so it was all a dr But then
• 1:01:13
  they also recorded, for the vast majority of them their own English version,
• 1:01:16
  which we all watched the German version, which I personally have preferred, just
• 1:01:22
  because I feel it matching the pace and tone and lips and all of that.
• 1:01:30
  I think it connects more. Anytime you watch a dub, you're always
• 1:01:34
  trying to fit more we can do it into it. It doesn't. It
• 1:01:37
  would came something even though I had to stare on my screen for like four
• 1:01:40
  hours to watch this movie, but I gladly did it. But this is
• 1:01:45
  also one of those movies that I mean, like like Schindler's List being made
• 1:01:51
  by Steven Spielberg. I mean, this is the fact that it is a
• 1:01:54
  German made movie, This fact that it is German speakers making it, the
• 1:01:59
  fact that is Wolf King Peterson making it about his own country and his own
• 1:02:02
  you know story, Like that's a part of it too. Like I don't
• 1:02:07
  think anyone else could have told this story or should have told this story in
• 1:02:12
  this way. And I mean we've again mentioned about how it's impact on submarine
• 1:02:21
  films. I mean, how many times you hear a ping and it and
• 1:02:24
  it creates tension like that's from this movie. It all comes from dos Boot.
• 1:02:30
  But yeah it Now, I did feel that I connected more with the
• 1:02:36
  characters. Again it I couldn't tell you their names, but overall, you
• 1:02:44
  know, I think they had a lot of really great moments of you know,
• 1:02:49
  their wife was sick or they missed the look of snow or the lovely
• 1:02:53
  like it was a very human movie overall, like very human. And I
• 1:03:00
  mean I'm glad the captain wore the white hat so we knew which one was
• 1:03:04
  the captain at the beginning because that just helped. But yeah, I just
• 1:03:08
  started to feel like this motley crew of you know, submariners that you're you're
• 1:03:15
  hoping, you know, get through it at the end, even though a
• 1:03:17
  lot of them die from the attack at the very end, none of them
• 1:03:22
  die throughout the actual story. That's incredible, like all the things, they
• 1:03:27
  actually survived together and don't lose like half the crew. Like that's incredible,
• 1:03:31
  But that's also war that is sometimes happens. It's not you know, I
• 1:03:36
  think that almost added a bit of realism to it, in the fact that,
• 1:03:39
  yeah, it's kind of submarine warfare is kind of all or nothing.
• 1:03:44
  Either you sink the boat and we all die, or maybe we all live.
• 1:03:47
  But yeah, it again from the we talked about the perspective. I
• 1:03:52
  love the fact that is just the crew, that it is so tight on
• 1:03:58
  their story. I don't know if they ever had a swing set or some
• 1:04:01
  bullhead they pulled out to get a whiter shot. It didn't feel like it
• 1:04:04
  felt like everything was inside that tin can. Maybe maybe one shot, but
• 1:04:10
  just one shot, just one shot where they pulled off the wall and that
• 1:04:13
  was it, and they hated that they did it, because yeah, I
• 1:04:15
  loved you know, you know when they're all getting to their stations and the
• 1:04:19
  two guys who have to turn the wheels are like sitting on a bench because
• 1:04:24
  that's what you do. That's all there. There's no chairs, you know,
• 1:04:27
  there's benches if you're lucky. But yeah, so I I did enjoy
• 1:04:31
  it. Now again, will it probably be a couple of decades till I
• 1:04:33
  watched this again. Yes, I mean it's not just like Schendler's list.
• 1:04:38
  I rarely am like, you know what I'm feeling in the mood for Nazis,
• 1:04:44
  let's let's just and death. No, that's it's but no, as
• 1:04:48
  a as a cinematic piece, I have to give it at least a four
• 1:04:54
  overall. I really I do enjoy this movie. Probably when you watching,
• 1:05:00
  would probably go for the theatrical because I don't necessarily know what I feel like
• 1:05:05
  I would miss in this longer cut. It might be interesting to compare it
• 1:05:11
  in my memory, but my memory will still remember the bits of this longer
• 1:05:15
  version and extra things. But so I'm going to give das Boot four pings
• 1:05:21
  only wait now it's a different movie. But no, I think as a
• 1:05:27
  film student, as you know, a lover of history, you know,
• 1:05:32
  don't write this movie off just because it is long. It Yeah, I
• 1:05:36
  might take you a weekend, but it's an experience and it may not be
• 1:05:41
  your favorite thing. You may hate submarines from the get go, and that's
• 1:05:45
  okay, because it's still the humanity of it is still going to get through.
• 1:05:49
  I think, no matter what, even in German, I wind up
• 1:05:57
  coming down with a strange rating because I do agree this is over long.
• 1:06:02
  I suspect this is another thing where there is a perfect length somewhere between this
• 1:06:08
  director's cut and the theatrical cut, which occurs very frequently. I think,
• 1:06:13
  I think that their director's cuts should be test screened with people who can give
• 1:06:18
  them feedback as to whether something got overly indulgent. In terms of timing.
• 1:06:25
  However, there is the fact that I did find myself engaged throughout the course
• 1:06:32
  of the film. I was unable to watch it in one sitting, but
• 1:06:38
  that's because I started it so late at night that I just couldn't stay awake
• 1:06:43
  sort of thing. But I was engaged. I think that if you're going
• 1:06:46
  to make a three and a half hour film, you're obligated to put an
• 1:06:50
  intermission into it instead of it would have been nice, because honestly, screw
• 1:06:58
  you, because you should give a break. We watched we just watched The
• 1:07:02
  Ten Commandments for Pete's Sake over on Houselight, not on We just watched the
• 1:07:10
  Ten Commandments over on Missing Frames also here on the Nerd Party network, and
• 1:07:15
  that had an intermission. So, even though it was insanely long, when
• 1:07:19
  it hit that break point, it was like, Okay, I can do
• 1:07:25
  things. I can step away the way that other people had an intermission.
• 1:07:29
  We just watched that over here to let people go get another drink and smoke
• 1:07:32
  a cigarette and go to the bath. For modern comp should have intermissions.
• 1:07:36
  We need to bring the intermission back once you go beyond a certain length for
• 1:07:41
  goodness sake, and don't make it just a title card that says five years
• 1:07:45
  later, Avengers end game, I'm looking in your direction. So I wind
• 1:07:50
  up giving this film a little bit higher than my overall rating for a film
• 1:07:57
  that is a bit overlong, because I do acknowledge that it is a technical
• 1:08:03
  marvel in a lot of sense, and I wind up giving it a four
• 1:08:06
  and a half. I think that this is a magnificent film overall. I
• 1:08:17
  think that in terms of the comments were throwing out there, it's like,
• 1:08:21
  oh, but it's about the Nazis. I think that one of the things
• 1:08:26
  the film effectively does is come back to the fact that these are guys in
• 1:08:31
  the military who are being thrown, they're being drafted, they're being conscripted,
• 1:08:40
  there being whatever, they're being put in this situation, and if you really
• 1:08:44
  gave them the choice, most of them probably wouldn't be here. They wouldn't
• 1:08:49
  choose to do this. But because of outmoded senses of obligation, outmoded senses
• 1:08:56
  of duty, outmoded senses of patriotism, outmoded sensitive of all of these things.
• 1:09:02
  And the scene that really sticks with me is the scene where they go
• 1:09:08
  on board the naval officer's boat and they have this sch Morga's board there,
• 1:09:15
  and the naval officer is like, well, you know, I mean it's
• 1:09:18
  it's enough like home. It's not as good as it could be, but
• 1:09:21
  you know, we try to do anything. And the Captain Jurgen proc Now
• 1:09:25
  goes up and he eats a fresh fig and he says, I've never tasted
• 1:09:30
  one before, or words to that effect. And the movie, I think,
• 1:09:34
  in that specific moment throws out there that the act of war in and
• 1:09:42
  of itself is a bunch of fat cats at the top who never see combat,
• 1:09:48
  throwing a bunch of people for their own ideological means and goals to say,
• 1:09:56
  oh, yeah, you can go in the meat grinder. I'm going
• 1:09:59
  to be back here, and oh the deprivation, so I have to go
• 1:10:02
  through our own bakery on board. Can't quite get the bread right, like
• 1:10:08
  f all of those guys, f all of those people that throw everyone into
• 1:10:13
  the into the hell that is war that for no other reason. Then it's
• 1:10:18
  like, yeah, you know, I think this is what we want to
• 1:10:20
  do. And I think it makes it even more tragic that they get out
• 1:10:26
  of the Gibraltar situation and they get back and there's this palpable sense of maybe
• 1:10:32
  some of these people are going to jump ship because they've had it, there's
• 1:10:39
  enough, they're done, And then the capper is they can't get out of
• 1:10:45
  it, and so there's a double tragedy in that moment. So that's why
• 1:10:47
  I come in at a four and a half, and I'll stick with it.
• 1:10:50
  I have a heavy suspicion that the theatrical cut is a five, so
• 1:10:56
  I will double back to it at some point. I think I would probably
• 1:10:59
  give that a five as well. It's I'm a hard high four as well.
• 1:11:03
  So I know that our rating section went on for a bit here,
• 1:11:09
  So, um, who's hosting the next one? Who's the you're hosting the
• 1:11:14
  next one? But my gosh, what am I going to be watching for
• 1:11:18
  the next episode of Houselights? Oh? Next, we're jumping to nineteen eighty
• 1:11:23
  four, A little more fantasy, a little less war. We're talking about
• 1:11:28
  the never ending story. Some might have called das Boot the never ending story,
• 1:11:31
  but no, this one is actually the never ending story that fairytale,
• 1:11:35
  and we'll be watching it next Here on Houselights join the Revolution, join the
• 1:11:42
  Nerd Party, and