earthtracer

This is one of the most powerful films I have seen for many years. There has been a lot of tosh written and spoken about it being anti-English (or British) but in fact it is anti-war. Beautifully crafted, one is drawn into the fierce Irish independence struggle against the occupying British, who are removed, but the Irish are still expected to be part of the Empire. It all goes downhill from there, as the pro- and anti-Treaty factions split and the whole horror is re-run, but this time as internecine strife and all the tearing and shredding of loyalties civil war causes. Loach has managed to encapsulate all of this into an absolutely brilliant film. It is no wonder it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. The only surprise to me is that there are not long queues at the box-office.

This film gives an excellent idea of what it was like to fight one of His Majesty's submarines during World War II. It is probably the most authentic footage of its kind and certainly better than even the best fiction films such as the highly-acclaimed "We Dive at Dawn". Someone looking for a 'good story' might ridicule this, but anyone who knows anything about British WWII submarines would find this wonderfully authentic. The boats used, "Tyrant" and "Strongbow", are actually the T-class "Tribune" and S-class "Sea Dog", built by Scotts Shipbuilding & Engineering Co Ltd at Greenock and by Cammel Laird on the Mersey respectively. As there are no surviving examples of either class, this film is about as near as one will ever get to seeing them.

The submarine used was NOT Varangian! 'It' was in fact two boats, P614 and P615, both built for Turkey by Vickers Armstorng at Barrow-in-Furness but kept hold of by the Royal Navy for the duration of the war. P615 was sunk but P614 was eventually delivered in 1945.

The confusion no doubt arose because someone looked up P61 (as I did) and found Varangian! When in fact, the last digit of both P614 and P615 was in fact just painted out....

There are some extremely realistic moments in the film. These Turkish boats were very similar to the S-class. As no S-class submarines survive, the shots of them (as P61) and of the depot ship "Forth" form part of an interesting record now, as well as an excellent film.