The Tunnel Review

• 19th Apr 2011

Hans Conrad Schuman unwittingly became the poster boy for East German defectors when, as a 19 year old soldier in 1961, he found himself guarding the Berlin Wall on the third day of its construction. Schuman made a rash move – in full view of his colleagues and press photographer Peter Leibing, Schuman heeded the calls from the watching West Germans (“come over!”) and leapt over the barbed wire fence that was soon to become the defining symbol of the Cold War era. The image snapped by Leibing is iconic. All that is visible of Schuman’s face, obscured as it is by his helmet, is his mouth set in concentration and his arms are stretched out as far as the rifle slung over his right shoulder will allow. In the background is a small knot of East Germans, only one of whom has turned at the crucial moment to see Schuman’s literal leap of faith.

Schuman’s own life would make a terrific movie with a terrible ending (in 1998 he committed suicide), but it’s this defining moment that director Roland Suso Richter awkwardly shoehorns into The Tunnel. Richter’s story is about another real person, Harry Melchior, and the co-opting of Schuman’s jump is symptomatic of a film that (tunnelling puns aside) is in danger of collapsing under the weight of too much information. The scene also feels like an unnecessary bid for authenticity – in Richter’s version, the small knot of onlookers is comprised of several of his main characters.

Melchior was an East German swimming champion who was fortunate enough to make it out of East Berlin on a false passport just before the Wall became a horrifying reality. Along with a team of brave and like-minded individuals who also had loved ones in the east, he dug the most famous escape tunnel of all beneath the Wall. Once it was completed, literally hundreds of East Germans used it to escape to the west. Its construction was not straightforward, and The Tunnel uses a fair chunk of its arduous 160 minutes to provide a near-documentary on how it was done. Not one for the claustrophobics then and not one for anybody who’s already figured out tunnels are created by digging. Richter’s most exciting action all takes place above ground and he just doesn’t spend enough time up there to let the story breathe.

How much detail about the group, e.g. their life and relationships, has been invented I couldn’t tell you (the near-obsessive bond Melchior’s supposed to share with his sister certainly raised my eyebrows) and although there’s a bit too much time spent on these sub-plots at least it can’t be said that Richter has ignored character development.

This is very recent history and Richter and his cast are clearly at pains to do right by all concerned – a tall order. But, by not leaving anything out, the audience is going to start to wonder very early on if The Tunnel will ever have an end.

Clare Moody