The Red Baron (2008)

The Red Baron is a 2008 war film directed by Nikolai Müllerschoen and starring Matthias Schweighöfer, Lena Headey and Joseph Fiennes.

I bought The Red Baron years ago but only got around to watching it recently because the cheap packaging made it look fairly ordinary. I should have known better than to let packaging deceive me. It’s a fantastic film. I’d put it right up there with War Horse as one of the better films depicting World War One. 

It’s rare to see an English-language film depicting things from the German side, and it’s here that The Red Baron really shines. The Nazi party was still more than a decade away – these fighter pilots are indeed fanatics, but they are fanatic about flying. The combat (at least at first) is completely secondary and they see it more as ‘sport’ than warfare. When Manfred von Richtofen first takes command of a fighter wing he emphasises to his men that they are to shoot down airplanes, not men. There’s a strange sort of chivalry between the British and German fighter pilots (something that was mostly lacking in the trenches they fought above) evident when the Red Baron and his loyal wingmen fly over a British flyer’s funeral at the beginning of the film to drop a wreath. They considered the British their opponents, not their enemies. 

This is also illustrated when Richtofen rescues a British pilot he’s shot down (Joseph Fiennes) and pulls him from the plane, handing him over to a nurse (Lena Headey). It’s enough to down the plane, he has no interest in killing the man flying it. He sees himself more as a duelling knight than a soldier, even remarking that dogfighting is like jousting, like ‘a tournament’.

Richtofen is a wonderfully drawn out character. We are first introduced to him as a young boy, and this is one of my favourite scenes. He’s hunting with his younger brother and he has a deer in his sights, but then gets distracted as a plane flies overhead. I like the way he abandons his rifle without shooting the deer – it’s not subtle but it works marvellously: he enjoys the hunt, not the kill.

Schweighöfer plays Richtofen with a mixture of boyish enthusiasm and war-weariness. His best scene by far is when he’s talking to Lena Headey about why he refuses to accept an officer’s commission (which would see him grounded, giving orders instead of flying, and thus safe as more and more German pilots are blown out of the sky by the advancing allies). He says he refuses to order his men into battle, he will only lead them. 

This scene comes after a mercifully non-sentimental love story between the Baron and the nurse after she treats him for a head wound. He playfully says he’s glad he got shot down because it gave him a chance to see her, so she decides to take the wind out of his sails by showing him the other side of the conflict, the one he has remained immune to while flying above it. 

At the same time, as the war ramps up and the allies advance, more and more of his wingmen begin to die rather than simply get shot down, and the varnish starts to come off. The scenes where his friends die are played brilliantly – there’s nothing heroic about it, they are just mangled bodies in the flaming remains of their aircraft. His bright red plane starts to become more of a burden on his soul than the symbol of German victory the military leadership are using it as. I like the scene where he visits the front lines at the Western Front and sees German soldiers being mown down by British machine guns. There’s nothing chivalrous about it, it’s just ugly. It’s around this time that he stops believing his own legend and starts to come to terms with the fact that, in the air or on the ground, it’s not a sporting match, it’s just war. 

I don’t know a great deal about the real Richtofen, but the film seems to stick pretty well to historical accuracy. For instance he got his famous nickname because he painted one of his early bi-planes red long before the famous red tri-plane showed up (he only flies it in the climactic battle of the film, the rest is in bi-planes). And there’s a solemnity to the final battle as he gives his wingmen a short pep talk before take-off. It’s clear they all know the war is lost and the battle is futile. This last aerial battle is filmed superbly – it’s far more brutal than the earlier jousting matches. Planes don’t gently coast to earth; they plunge from the sky engulfed in flame or simply break apart like wooden toys.

And the final piece of historical accuracy is one I really liked – we don’t see the Red Baron’s death (in reality it was never confirmed who actually shot him down), the film ends with Lena Headey visiting his grave and seeing that the British laid a wreath on it. Nice closure to a really nicely-done film. Two hours well spent.

Intersection (1993)

Intersection is a 1993 film starring Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovich and the ghost from Stir of Echoes and directed by Mark Rydell.

The biggest problem I have with Intersection is that Richard Gere's character is immensely unlikeable. It's impossible to sympathise with the plight of a protagonist who is such a colossal douchebag. Every problem he faces in the entire film (including the car accident) is entirely the result of his own selfishness. The whole film is built around the crucible of a car wreck that apparently claims his life, shown at the beginning, hence the title. But even this elicits no sympathy - he crashes into a stalled van because he is speeding like a loon on wet country roads with blind bends.

Anyway, Vincent (Gere) is a famous architect who was stuck in a loveless marriage with Sharon Stone (there's a problem for starters - I find it impossible to believe a woman as sexy as Stone is could be anything but ferociously enthusiastic in bed) until he met some ditzy redhead, Olivia (Lolita Davidovich) at an auction and suddenly discovered himself . . . or whatever. Because of their daughter (the chick from House and the ghost in Stir of Echoes when she was like, 12) and their architecture firm Gere and Stone are forced to still spend time together, and of course this causes issues with Gere and the ditzy redhead yadda yadda.

The scene towards the end outside the diner where Gere cries as he writes a letter ending his relationship with Olivia (a "find someone who doesn't have complications", type-thing) as rain beats down on his car is supposed to show how heartbreaking it all is for him, but for me it's just hilarious. Firstly because Gere is not a very solid actor, his tears seem horribly rehearsed, but more so because Vincent, the poor baby, is basically deciding which of the two women in his love triangle will have the privilege of his company. His wishy-washy excuses of wanting Olivia to find someone better are facetious at best - her needs are completely irrelevant. It's all about him.

And he's not half irritating. Throughout the film, Gere babbles these almost incomprehensible monologues that are supposed to show what a deep guy he is and how passionate he is about the women he loves, but he just comes off as an obnoxious nitwit.

The character we're supposed to root for, Olivia, is unfortunately not much better. She's one of those annoyingly eccentric characters, and her vibrant personality is supposed to be a counterpoint to Stone's cold detachment as the wife. Unfortunately she's just irritating. She bounces around like a squirrel on meth and her behaviour throughout the film is obnoxious - she shows up drunk to an event so she can create some drama because she knows Vincent's wife will be there, she gets horribly insecure about her relationship with him because he seems reluctant to build her a house so they can play happy couples, and she tries mercilessly and shamelessly to ingratiate herself to his daughter. She's a bundle of insecurity wrapped in a pretty package and has a fuse as short as a lima bean. She's the sort of chick you learn to avoid after she throws your possessions from a second-storey window and tries to brain you with a marble ashtray. But Gere hops after her like a lovestruck puppy.

The character I felt the most sympathy towards was actually Sharon Stone's. As I mentioned she is supposed to be the cold, detached wife that drove Vincent into the arms of another woman, but she is basically a decent person. Her only flaw seems to be that she married a dipshit. There's a ridiculous flashback scene in their bathroom where Vincent is coming onto her and she takes a phone call from a colleague. Gere slinks away pouting while she's on the phone and we're supposed to feel bad for him - oh, look, she denied him sex, what a twat! No wonder he hates her!

The film ends with Gere apparently breaking up with Olivia by writing her the letter, but then he has a sudden change of heart (he sees a little girl with red hair and gets all weepy) so he leaves a voicemail for Olivia (another babbled monologue) but then gets wiped out by a semi-trailer on his way to see her. Sharon Stone gets to the hospital first and finds the letter but decides not to give it to Olivia, thus both women leave thinking he had chosen her. The narcissism of this is absurd. Once again, it's not about Stone or Olivia. Their happiness is completely irrelevant - it's all about who was 'chosen' by Vincent.

And to make matters worse, we get some overwrought dream sequence as Vincent is dying where he sees his daughter and Olivia at a dreamy wedding banquet as some sort of symbol of the happiness he might have been headed towards. The startling thing about it, for me, is that Sharon Stone is not in it at all. A woman he supposedly loved, the mother of his daughter, and as he's dying he doesn't give her a single thought? She was probably better off without him.