7 / 10
The Red Baron is a German-produced biopic about Manfred von Richthofen filmed in English with German actors. That sentence describes most of what is right and most of what is wrong with the film. Nikolai Müllerschön directed it. Matthias Schweighöfer plays Richthofen. Joseph Fiennes plays the Canadian pilot Roy Brown, who probably didn’t shoot Richthofen down but gets the credit in this version anyway. Lena Headey plays a fictional nurse named Käte who falls for the Baron.
The script wants to be Pearl Harbor in biplanes. It wants the audience to root for a German aristocrat shooting down young British pilots and to feel something tragic when he dies in April 1918 at age twenty-five. The film almost gets there.
What Works
The aerial photography is excellent. Real Fokker triplane replicas were built. The dogfights have weight and geography. You can tell which plane is which, who’s chasing whom, and what’s at stake. Most aviation films get this wrong. This one gets it right.
Schweighöfer is good as Richthofen. Aristocratic, charming, and just remote enough that you believe a man who kept eighty kill markers in his quarters might also keep his receipts for engraved silver cups marking each victory. The real Richthofen did this. The film doesn’t make it weird. It just shows him doing it.
For Writers
Show a protagonist’s habits. Don’t justify them. Richthofen kept silver cups engraved with the date of each kill. He commissioned them after each victory. The film puts the cups on a shelf in his quarters and never explains them. The viewer draws their own conclusion about what kind of man does that. If the script had stopped to justify the cups, the meaning would have collapsed. Trust the detail to carry its own weight.
The English-Dialogue Problem
The decision to shoot in English was commercial. The producers wanted the international market. The cost was that German pilots speak to each other in English with German accents while flying over German airfields. The audience knows what’s happening. The film is less serious as a result.
Das Boot proved decades ago that a German-language WWI or WWII film can succeed internationally with subtitles. The Red Baron either didn’t believe that or didn’t want to bet eighteen million dollars on it. Either way, the choice undercuts the period authenticity the rest of the production worked hard to establish.
For Writers
Commercial decisions made early in a project show up on the page later. The language choice in Red Baron was made for distribution reasons. The audience doesn’t know about the distribution reasons. The audience knows that the dialogue feels off. Decisions that solve business problems can create story problems if you don’t pay attention. The reader doesn’t care why you made the choice. The reader cares whether it works.
The Romance Problem
Käte doesn’t exist in history. The script invents her so Richthofen has someone to be vulnerable with. She’s a nurse, she’s principles about the war, she questions whether killing for Germany is moral. None of this happened. The real Richthofen wrote an autobiography that didn’t contain doubt. The film grafts a modern conscience onto a man who didn’t have one and asks the audience to find that gripping.
It doesn’t work. The Richthofen who existed was harder, simpler, and more frightening than the Richthofen in the film. The honest version would have been more interesting.
For Writers
Inventing a love interest to soften a historical figure is a habit of bad biopics. The reasoning goes: the real man is too cold for modern audiences to follow for two hours, so we add a woman who brings out his hidden depth. The reality is that the real man was watchable because he was the real man. Audiences will follow difficult historical figures if the film commits to them. Inventing softness to make them palatable produces a softer film, not a more accessible one.
Craft Note
Nikolai Müllerschön directed and co-wrote. Matthias Schweighöfer played Manfred von Richthofen. Joseph Fiennes played Roy Brown. Lena Headey played the fictional Käte Otersdorf. Til Schweiger in support. Eighteen million dollar German production filmed in English. Released April 2008 in Germany, 2010 in the United States. Mixed reception. Real Fokker triplane replicas used for aerial sequences.
Is The Red Baron worth watching?
7/10. A flawed biopic carried by its aerial sequences. The flying scenes are worth the watch. The romance isn’t. The English-dialogue decision is a mistake the film never recovers from. Watch it for the airplanes.
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