HMS Ulysses

[Grayback]

Originally Posted by Hellcat

I think that we can all agree that U-571 was merely meant as a popcorn flick and nothing more.

I'm going to take two stands here that may make me instantly unpopular.

1) I enjoyed U-571. I never thought it was a true story because even slightly true stories are relentlessly hyped as "based on a true story" or "inspired by actual events". I disagree that it disrespected our British allies who also nabbed an Enigma code-machine (apparently before the events "depicted" in -571) by showing us get one. The secrecy surrounding Enigma was heavy during wartime and remained in effect even after the end of the war - it's conceivable that the British government disclosed their acquisition of Enigma to the Americans with strict instructions to keep that fact under wraps. Thus, -571 doesn't deny the British achievment simply because characters therein didn't know about it. Britain's obsessive secrecy of Enigma was raised in the Robert Harris novel "Enigma" (and presumbaly in the movie as well, though I never saw it) to the point that a British codebreaker in Bletchley gets trapped into conversation with a visiting American who all but accuses the Brits of sitting on top of vital informatio as a way to entrap the Americans. Now, I know that movies don't get the attention of books - still I think the conspicuous lack of protest against "Enigma" points to a darker accusation than the slight of U-571.

2) I think our pop culture places waaaay too much importance on movies as a barometer of what really matters. If you've got a pivotal book, the only way to ratify it's importance is make a movie about it - even though movies have to make (often) painful compromises. Nobody questions this because these compromises are crucial to get the movies made - therefore characters are constructed as composites of real life characters, and situations unfold to fit dramatic as well as historic considerations.

What nobody questions, however, is why these movies are made if they can't be without these compromises. I think this point was conspicuously evaded during the controversy over the recent 9/11 TV-movie. we had to cut corners they told us - all but insisting that they couldn't make the movie without doing so, but never admitting that the world could do without a 9/11 movie (perfect or otherwise) given that the subject was already exhaustively covered in innumerable books and magazine articles.

Taking that rationale to the histories of submarines, why make compromised movies (that we just know we'll hate when we've got tons of books already? Are we so hot to amaze the wider audiences who don't read by giving them escapist fare like 571 or Pearl Harbor? Are we going to do a big movie version of Blind Man's Bluff with Eastwood as John Craven and Anthony Hopkins as Gorshkov? A movie that glances over the real milestones in place of the dramatic ones, fudges history and guarantees that it will get slammed on boards like this? I know I don't, and given the reception given here to other movies, I'm sure I'm not alone on this.

Hopefully one day it will become practical to make a movie of this scale despite the apparent lack of interest in the mainstream for this type of movie. Who knows stranger things have certainly happend.

I think the movie will be made by making it palatable only to the mainstream, which is to say that it might as well not be made at all.

[Iron Budokan]

I saw The Bedford Incident. Not a bad anti-war film as these things go. Lots of tension throughout and believable actions by the characters. Worth a peep.