Kursk

As personagens dos marinheiros poderiam ter sido desenvolvidas de outras formas para além de relações familiares estereotipadas com esposas e filhos, mas os almirantes acima da água compensam ricamente com as suas variadas motivações e enquadramentos políticos. Colin Firth é adequado para o seu papel de capitão de carácter, bem como Tom Hanks. Para não mencionar o almirante soviético comunista Max von Sidow, que nos dá arrepios. O elenco em geral é ótimo aqui, não me dava conta até agora de como são «russos» os rostos de Schoenaerts e Seydoux. Porém, o que mais aprecio no filme é o equilíbrio temático e a complexidade. Na mesma medida em que Kursk trata da tragédia dos homens debaixo de água, trata também do conflito político sobre a água, do absurdo da abordagem soviética em relação ao acontecimento. Dum sistema podre que traiu o seu próprio povo por ideias falsas. A segunda Chernobyl após catorze anos. O enquadramento da história por um jovem rapaz, um filho dum dos marinheiros do submarino, e a sua compreensão da situação e a sua reação à mesma, dão ao filme o seu valor essencial. (06/01/2021)

I'm not a big fan of submarines and the Navy, so I went into this film more out of curiosity and it wasn't bad. The explosion in Kursk is filmed decently and the following submarine survival drama is filmed entertainingly though it definitely could have been grittier as well as more gripping. I wasn't bored but I'm not the target audience. However, for fans of submarines and movies based on true events, I recommend it. 60%. (14/05/2019)

I would like to draw your attention to Marigold's submarine dogma in advance: submarine = automatically * plus. Because according to all other criteria, Thomas Vinterberg shot only a slightly above-average genre template. A celebration of boyish friendship spiced with sentiment and two-dimensional characters. He tries to draw something more from the jerky screenplay by Robert Rodat (among others, Saving Private Ryan) through format changes, veristic filming and emphasis on wordless details (a boy as a silent witness and conscience). But there is simply nothing more in this film. The real case is devastating and could do without the extra drama. The film works because some of the sequences are catchy (underwater search for oxygen cartridges in one suffocating shot) and Schoenaerts does a decent job in the lead role, as does Firth in the supporting role. As a Kursk Memorial it is dignified, but above the surface the film does not release the conflict between the Hollywood template and the attempt to conceive it as a civil statement about the tragedy of ordinary people. The performances of broken mothers then inadvertently resemble bad theater. It's a shame, but the years in development hell didn't help. (15/01/2019)

A European drama about supra-multinational theme. It is true that if it was filmed by the Russians or if the actors were speaking Russian the movie would get a new dimension and it would definitely add some authenticity. On the other hand, I would be afraid that the story might end up as one big demagogy so eventually Thomas Vinterberg is for me the ideal choice. Not only he filmed the movie in a quite good way, the movie even featured some of the best European actors and therefore it was worth watching. That’s good enough for me. It doesn’t make you feel as suffocated as Das boot might and the number of explosions and special effects is lesser than if this film had been filmed by the Americans. On the other hand, there is a greater emphasis on relationships and the story line of Léa Seydoux is literally amazing. Not to mention what happened in the submarine. (16/09/2019)

I remember the TV coverage of the disaster and the film captures it faithfully, including the injection of a sedative to one of the distraught mothers. Anyway, one thing is clear from the film: if something similar happened to any of the NATO armies that the local Putin trolls spit on as much as they can, their leadership might break ranks to save these boys. But the Russian military leadership has a different yardstick, the ‘there’s plenty of us’ rule. In Russia, human life has never been worth anything, ever since the Battle of Stalingrad, when they deployed young unarmed boys to the front lines with firing squads at their backs. As Papa Stalin used to say: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Russia, a land of unlimited possibilities... (03/06/2019)