Hollywood's History of the World (U-571 (DVD))

Member Name: edie

Product:	U-571 (DVD)
Date:	21/03/01 (255 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Genuine Thriller

Disadvantages: Non-genuine History

Do movies have a duty to depict the past accurately? Maybe and maybe not. On one hand surely everyone understands that Hollywood is in the business of making movies not writing textbooks. The only real consideration is entertainment and any reasonable viewer will leave their expectations at the popcorn counter. And yet, it’s a concern that people (especially younger viewers) will believe the events in historically themed movies are true. Or that such is the power of movies their clichés colour our beliefs about the past. Who not now feels that all Romans were sadistic posh-accented sexual deviants who liked nothing better than torturing Christians? Or more pertinantly, that the USA won the Second World War single-handed?

U571 was the subject of much negative comment in the press for its depiction of an American crew capturing the German code machine the Enigma in 1942. When in reality it was recovered by the Royal Navy and decoded by British mathematicians. The central outrage of commentators being that the USA was trying to appropriate a purely British success story

Watching U571 I feel that the intentions of all involved was making a quality piece of action cinema rather than claiming Enigma glory for the USA. It’s vehemently not the story of the Enigma which is being covered by Michael Apted’s Kate Winslet staring movie of the same title out later this year. The Enigma plays such a small part in U571 that I wondered why it was included at all. In screenplay terms it’s a “MacGuffin”, the essentially contrived plot device that is only used to trigger the drama- in this case to get the American crew trapped on a German sub.

More outrageous and less documented than the Enigma affair was that U571 seems like an obvious copy of the German movie Das Boot. Someone in Hollywood probably decided that it was a good idea to re-make that movie but in English and with Americans as the heroes (so you don’t ge
t that worrying feeling like at the end of Das Boot when you realize that you’ve been rooting for the Nazis for the past two hours). And for a second-rate idea, it’s definitely a winner.

To be fair, as a genre the submarine movie is fairly limited in it’s dramatic scope. From Above Us the Waves to Crimson Tide there are only so many variations directors can do on men stuck in a giant tin can in the ocean. So U571 dutifully reprises the scene that occurs in every sub movie where the hunted U boat has to dive down to below the maximum depth to evade pursuers, a scene that is still gripping despite its over-familiarity.

Similarly the characters are cardboard cut-outs who spout lines from the war movie stereotype book. Only T.C Carson as the crew’s black steward has any depth and he’s passed over in favor of Matthew McConnaughy’s nervous novice captain, Harvey Keitel’s gruff navy veteran (a role that was probably written with Gene Hackman in mind), Thomas Kretschman’s devious German hostage and more inexplicably, Jon Bon Jovi.

Director Jonathan Mostow’s last film was the efficient road-thriller Breakdown and he’s clearly more comfortable with action than the human element. In U571 he certainly delivers on the action front, replacing Das Boot’s sweaty claustrophobia with satisfying explosions and tense quiet moments. Probably the best scene just uses sound effects to re-create a nail-biting depth charge attack.

Watching U571 I didn’t feel patriotically outraged, just thoroughly entertained. What I find more worrying than U571 are movies like Michael Collins for example, high-minded dramas that present themselves as “based on truth” while taking as much liberties as any mindless Hollywood blockbuster. But U571 rightly considers itself an action movie not a documentary. Apart from it’s Enigma conceit the movie is full of less contiguous historical e
rrors: the plane with only on engine, the German Destroyer that would have never ventured into the Atlantic, the basic fact that whoever captured the first enigma it was a lot less interesting than the events in this movie. A student of World War Two won’t learn much from watching U571 but then they (probably) wouldn’t expect to either.

Summary: