Death lurks behind every steel inch of the Cappellini submarine, which sets course for the Atlantic in October 1940. It will make history, not with one battle or a record number of enemies sunk. Rather, there is one gesture of humanity at the center of the war film Comandante, which opens this year’s 80th Venice Film Festival.
But Comandante offers a bit more than outdated historical cinema. To be more precise: much more.
The war film tells the true story of a rescue operation
The current Italian drama comandante par excellence plays the main character: Pierfrancesco Favino (Last Night of Amore) exudes an authority that predestines him as a policeman and gangster actor. Submarine commander Salvatore Todaro fits into this cabinet of figures. The aching, yoga-practicing leader is as resilient as his heavy leather coat.
Rai Cinema
Commander
He goes to sea for Mussolini’s Italy and emphasizes his independence in the film (“I’m not a fascist, I’m a sailor”). The latter is put to the test after a Belgian transporter is shot at. 26 survivors escape the sinking ship. Should he leave her to die, as his orders demand? Todaro chooses the only right thing. But so overloaded with people, the vessel must remain on the surface – on display for the British fleet.
Director Edoardo De Angelis renounces the realism of Das Boot or the sheer suspense cinema of The Hunt for Red October in the adaptation of Todaro’s true story. Instead he lays out the war film as an ancient saga somewhere between torpedoes and sonar. Their commanders, captains and sailors turn their backs on the fog and women on land, they are constantly being dragged into the sea because their warlike fate demands a pledge.
Rai Cinema
Commander
In the screenplay, the unusual dive is ballasted with dialogues between pulp and regulars’ table philosophy, which should only be read with Bruce Willis’ dubbing voice in mind: “Plankton is the sperm of the sea”reads one sentence. Another: “He will die like a mother: while he feeds his comrades.” If the submarine weren’t powered by its diesel electric motor, then you could concentrated male callousness tap off on board as fuel.
120 minutes of paranoia and claustrophobia
Despite the stilted script lines, Comandante fulfills the minimum requirements of the submarine genre: sweaty paranoia and crushing agoraphobia. In the skirmishes of the Cappellini, De Angelis works with a few unfamiliar ideas. The opponents, for example, usually appear blurred on the horizon, almost outside the picture, which in turn cleverly limits our perspective. The opponent only becomes human when he – armed – screams for help in the water.
Each combat station of the submarine is staged as a stage in the spotlight of which the individual surpasses himself. The film captain may not want to know anything about fascism, but in the contented heroic deaths between steel and comrade, the film comes dangerously close to this body of thought.
This is how Comandante evolves into a grotesque war film experience, a millennia-old epic on a stained beermat. On the one hand, one wants to be thankful that the film shows more ambition than many other “true stories” (especially those of the “festival opening film” variety). On the other hand, you just want to shake your head.
Rai Cinema
Commander
Comandante appears in places like a sailor variation of Zack Snyder’s 300. The script sees war as a deadly calamity, while the camera stylizes how it can squeeze the best out of people, even if it’s just their lives. This dichotomy is inherent in the war film genre as a whole, and whether it’s The Boat, Apocalypse Now, The Thin Red Line or Saving Private Ryan, each film crew must find their own way around. In Comandante, this chasm is traversed with dazzling self-love, which causes the film to capsize in the pathetic finale. At least one thing is guaranteed: There hasn’t been a more bizarre war film in a long time.
One last quip before we say goodbye to the Cappellini:
The Strait of Gibraltar is as narrow as a chicken’s ass.
With that, all has been said.
Comandante currently has no German launch date.