Movie Review: The Tunnel

Harry Melchior was an East German swimming champion who had taken part in the uprising against the Communist regime in the June Rebellion of 1953, for which he had been imprisoned for four years. The movie opens as Melchior wins the German Freestyle Championship in a swimming competition. This was August 13, 1961, the day before the Wall officially separated East and West Berlin. Government officials wanted to propagandize Melchior, but he snubs them by retiring as an athlete. He is determined to get out of East Germany and to take his sister and her husband and baby with him.

Matthis, engineer and close friend of Melchior, tries to flee with his wife through the sewers. Matthis makes it, but his wife is captured and imprisoned. Matthis works from the other side and helps provide Melchior with forged papers and identification documents. On August 26, 1961, Melchior makes a daring trip through Checkpoint Charlie and passes through to West Berlin.

There, a group is working to provide documents to others, and Melchior has the fantastic idea of digging a tunnel. With Matthis to engineer the project, and another friend, Fred, to help, they embark on this impossible mission.

The movie takes the viewer through the frustrating beginning phase of constructing the tunnel, and moves through the laborious earth removal, bucketful by bucketful, to be dumped in a slag pile in the basement of the abandoned factory where the tunnel originates. As things progress, more people are trusted to help, and there becomes a vast network of secret workers on both the East and West sides of the Wall. The story is mesmerizing. A series of problems with the tunnel arise and must be dealt with. It is hard to believe that this chronicles actual events, the grit and determination of the people on both sides are so intense.

This is a story of courage and stamina, of loyalty and disloyalty between friends and comrades, of cat and mouse with the East German Stasi officer, Kruger, who is a master of psychological manipulation and deception. He cleverly tries to discover the details of the escape by exploiting every bit of information from every angle.

"Der Tunnel" was originally a 3 hour German TV production, and was shortened to this 150 minute movie version. It does NOT seem long. There are so many sub-plots and so much action and intrigue that it is difficult to even take a break. And did I mention that it is in German with subtitles? Don't let that keep you from seeing this movie. Really.

The Tunnel is not a movie for young viewers, but teens should appreciate it . There are two scenes where sex/nudity might be a concern, but they'd be easy to skip over if you have your remote handy. They are not distastefully graphic, but worth mentioning.

This YouTube link takes you to a clip of the real hero, Hasso Herschel, showing the actual house and tunnel. There are some film clips from 1961 of the actual digging in here, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbcT9FOKPuM