Portrait of a War Hero

March 20, 2010 Comments »

Playing at the 5 Points Theatre through March 24.

Who was WWI’s most successful flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron? Was he a cold-hearted killing machine, enamored with the thrill of shooting down hundreds of men during aerial combat?

“The best part is the chase, the fight, the hunt.”

Or was he a man intent on serving his country proudly who becomes deeply affected by the brutality and pointlessness of war?

“We just need an excuse for what we do, because without it we would know who we really are? ” von Richtofen exclaims.

In Nikolai Muellerschoen’s portrait of the man so revered across Germany and used by the government to rally the people and the troops behind what was an unwinnable war, the Red Baron is both.

The Man Behind the Legend

The film begins with some impressive aerial dogfights, as we’re introduced to the young, arrogant, handsome pilot.

Already I’m thinking, “Oh no, not another story about a cocky war hero who’s a ladies’ man.”

But as the film progresses and many of the Baron’s fellow flyers get killed, we see another side to the leader of Fighter Squadron Jasta 11 who became a poster boy for the German war effort.

When his close friend, a Jewish pilot Friedrich Sternberg is killed in combat, von Richthofen is devastated by grief and secludes himself for several days.

I felt empathy for this very young fighter pilot who begins to understand that war is not a game but a cruel endeavor that costs lives—the lives of people we deeply care about.

I was drawn to his humanity, his frailty.

When he gets the news that another good friend of his, Lieutenant Werner Voss, has been shot down, the Baron’s perception of what it means to be a fighter pilot forever changes, and he tries to convince the government to surrender in light of the war’s futility.

The Truth about War

Von Richthofen himself is injured in a dogfight and nursed back to good health by nurse Kate Otersdorf with whom he falls in love. She tries to get him to accept a post directing the war’s strategy so he will be out of harm’s way. But the Baron decides to continue flying out of respect for his men.

We’ve turned the world into a damn slaughterhouse and I’m already too big a part of it. They use my photograph to give hope where there is none. They use my name to feign immortality whereas the reality is annihilation. You said it yourself, the men dying out there have no choice. I have and I cannot order men into battle. I can, perhaps, lead them, help them, die with them, but I will not betray them or keep the truth from them by remaining the immortal god that Berlin wants me to be.

Though “The Red Baron” could have delved deeper in von Richthofen’s character, I was moved by the film’s portrayal of a war hero conflicted by the grim reality of combat.