Movies and Films
This is the forum for Movie and Film discussions. Again, our topic is naval warfare in WWII for the most part.
Re: U-571
Posted by:
kurt
()
Date: December 30, 2003 09:30PM
<HTML>JT and all:
This thread has been dead for awhile, but nothing like flogging a dead horse.
In making a historically based movie, there are two truths, if you will; factual (or technical) truth, and emotional truth.
Factual truth would be getting the technical details right: the equipment is authentic and accurate; the dialog accurate, the costumes correct. In a technically accurate western, the Apaches actually speak Apache, not Navajo, Spanish, or mid-western English (I've seen all three). The guns shown were not produced after the period the movie is set in, the cosutmes reflect the actual uniforms or fashion of the times, etc. Many movie makers get caught up with factual truth, and can be quite sticklers: Cameron on Titanic was picky about many details only the most knowledgeable historian would notice. Few submarine movies are technically accurate: the sub interior are often dramatically different than the real thing, tactics are off, etc. Budget and schedule limitations can restrict what is practical to research and re-create, and often movie makers skip the details, knowing that few in the audience would know or care if the left handle or the right handle is the 'correct' one to pull to discharge an air bottle, or some such thing. U-571 apparently was quite accurate in this narrow definition: the sub interiors and technical operation were quite well reproduced.
Despite this care, and apart from its protrayal of German U-boaters (see below) U-571 was annoyingly bad because the action was so unrealistic. Like a bar fight scene where the protagonists effortlessly pick up grand pianos to fling at eachother, U-571's action sequences are so full of unrealistic and untrue silliness that the movie really was a drag to watch - it was akin to watching a movie with the boom mike popping into the scene, or cars driving by in the background of a 'period' set on the studio parking lot.
As JT alludes to, though, in movie making perhaps the greater truth is what I call 'emotional truth'. What I mean by this is that the movie, by its plots, characterization, and style, conveys an image that gives us an emotional imprint of the events and people being portrayed on the screen. If a film depicting actual historical events misses the mark here, then there is a great possibility of offending those who know better, and misleading those who do not, because it is this emotional imprint that people remember, not the technical details.
Emotional truth is much harder to pin down, because it revolves around style, opinion, and interpretation, even taste. U-571 was a disaster as a submarine movie much because it was so poor at catching this 'emotional' truth of U-boat crews - portraying them as 2-dimensional hollywood bad guys.
Well, U-571 has been trashed here enough.
Kurt
(BTW, regarding Pearl Harbor (another hopelessly silly film) I actually fell asleep watching it - a commentary in and of itself - and awoke to see Ben Afleck dogfighting with Germans! I thought to myself "Wow! I knew Pearl Harbor was innacurate, but this is really off the mark!" (Later I caught on that he was serving in England at the time :-)</HTML>
This thread has been dead for awhile, but nothing like flogging a dead horse.
In making a historically based movie, there are two truths, if you will; factual (or technical) truth, and emotional truth.
Factual truth would be getting the technical details right: the equipment is authentic and accurate; the dialog accurate, the costumes correct. In a technically accurate western, the Apaches actually speak Apache, not Navajo, Spanish, or mid-western English (I've seen all three). The guns shown were not produced after the period the movie is set in, the cosutmes reflect the actual uniforms or fashion of the times, etc. Many movie makers get caught up with factual truth, and can be quite sticklers: Cameron on Titanic was picky about many details only the most knowledgeable historian would notice. Few submarine movies are technically accurate: the sub interior are often dramatically different than the real thing, tactics are off, etc. Budget and schedule limitations can restrict what is practical to research and re-create, and often movie makers skip the details, knowing that few in the audience would know or care if the left handle or the right handle is the 'correct' one to pull to discharge an air bottle, or some such thing. U-571 apparently was quite accurate in this narrow definition: the sub interiors and technical operation were quite well reproduced.
Despite this care, and apart from its protrayal of German U-boaters (see below) U-571 was annoyingly bad because the action was so unrealistic. Like a bar fight scene where the protagonists effortlessly pick up grand pianos to fling at eachother, U-571's action sequences are so full of unrealistic and untrue silliness that the movie really was a drag to watch - it was akin to watching a movie with the boom mike popping into the scene, or cars driving by in the background of a 'period' set on the studio parking lot.
As JT alludes to, though, in movie making perhaps the greater truth is what I call 'emotional truth'. What I mean by this is that the movie, by its plots, characterization, and style, conveys an image that gives us an emotional imprint of the events and people being portrayed on the screen. If a film depicting actual historical events misses the mark here, then there is a great possibility of offending those who know better, and misleading those who do not, because it is this emotional imprint that people remember, not the technical details.
Emotional truth is much harder to pin down, because it revolves around style, opinion, and interpretation, even taste. U-571 was a disaster as a submarine movie much because it was so poor at catching this 'emotional' truth of U-boat crews - portraying them as 2-dimensional hollywood bad guys.
Well, U-571 has been trashed here enough.
Kurt
(BTW, regarding Pearl Harbor (another hopelessly silly film) I actually fell asleep watching it - a commentary in and of itself - and awoke to see Ben Afleck dogfighting with Germans! I thought to myself "Wow! I knew Pearl Harbor was innacurate, but this is really off the mark!" (Later I caught on that he was serving in England at the time :-)</HTML>
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U-571
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Re: U-571
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ROBERT M. | 12/09/2003 06:50AM |
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Ken Dunn | 12/10/2003 12:49AM |
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J.T. McDaniel | 12/10/2003 02:46AM |
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ROBERT M. | 12/10/2003 02:52AM |
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Steve Roberts | 12/10/2003 11:55AM |
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kurt | 12/30/2003 09:30PM |
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Re: U-571
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ROBERT M. | 12/31/2003 05:21AM |
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Re: U-571
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ROBERT M. | 12/10/2003 02:46AM |
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Re: U-571
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Paul K. Mengelberg | 12/12/2003 04:28AM |
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J.T. McDaniel | 12/12/2003 11:59PM |
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Paul K. Mengelberg | 12/12/2003 04:28AM |
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tim2 | 12/10/2003 04:39PM |
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Matt Brown | 12/16/2003 11:27AM |
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Matt | 12/19/2003 07:50PM |
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ROBERT M. | 12/10/2003 02:54AM |
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Daryl Carpenter | 12/10/2003 03:14AM |
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tim2 | 12/06/2003 06:35PM |
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Steve Roberts | 12/10/2003 11:57AM |
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Marc Lund | 12/18/2003 01:13AM |
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Re: U-571
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ROBERT M. | 12/18/2003 01:49AM |
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Re: U-571
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Ken Dunn | 12/18/2003 04:56AM |