On Movies: Inspired by real submarine tragedy

'It's man against nature, as well as man against man," Kevin Macdonald says about Black Sea, his submarine thriller set in the darkest waters off the Crimean coast. In the film, which opened in theaters Friday, Jude Law plays a bruising, brooding Scot, a marine salvage expert laid off from the job he has held for years. He throws in with a small group of fired coworkers, joined by a crew of Russian misfits, to search for a Nazi U-boat that has spent the last 70 years collecting silt on the ocean floor.

Why a Nazi U-boat? Because it was said to be carrying two tons of gold. Gold worth $180 million - more than enough money to warrant renting, and reviving, a mothballed sub, and recruiting men who can operate it. So what if there's a jumpy, green teenager onboard (Bobby Schofield), a money guy with a hidden agenda (Scoot McNairy), and a deep-sea diver (Ben Mendelsohn) with deep-seated paranoia issues. The Russians don't trust the Brits, and the Brits don't trust the Russians, and the submarine's drive shaft is making an ominous noise.

"I've always been fascinated by stories of human beings in extreme environments, I suppose," says Macdonald, who - in a publicity stunt he had nothing to do with - is conducting his interview in the control room of the U.S.S. Becuna, the World War II-commissioned Navy sub moored at Penn's Landing's Seaport Museum. (In fact, the Becuna shares many of the same structural and operational features as the Russian Foxtrot-class submarine that Law and his crew commandeer in Black Sea.)

"One of the things that attracts me to submarine movies, and this particular story," he adds, "is the survival element."

Macdonald, who directed The Last King of Scotland, for which Forest Whitaker won his Oscar, and the documentaries Touching the Void (Peruvian mountain climbing) and Marley (Rastafarian reggae superstar), grew up near the submarine base in Faslane, Scotland.

"There's always a big American contingent there, and British nuclear deterrent - we have nuclear submarines there. . . . It's our last vestige of empire, I suppose.

"And I grew up around a lot of people who worked in submarines, and my parents knew a commander of one of the submarines, and I went on a couple of submarines there, so it's always been part of my heritage."

But it was the Kursk disaster of 2000, when a Russian sub went down in the Barents Sea, that directly inspired Macdonald's underwater drama.

"There were people who survived the initial explosion and they were sitting in the bottom of the ocean," Macdonald says. "Rescuers could hear them tapping on the side of the hull, and slowly the air ran out before they could get to them. . . . And I was so struck by what a horrific death that must be, and wondered about what the people down at the bottom were thinking."

Macdonald imagined a what-if scenario: What would it have been like if the submarine had been populated with civilians, not trained Navy men? "And then the process of thought was, well, if they're down there, they must be looking for something, they're there illegally - and one thing led to another."

Which is how a plot that sounds more on the order of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre affixed itself to a submarine suspenser.

"Exactly!" Macdonald says, laughing. "That was what I said to the writer, Dennis Kelly. I gave him The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to watch and I said, 'I want to do The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - in a submarine.' . . . It's a natural blending of genres."

To lead the motley squad of seamen, divers, wary Russians, and unstable Brits, Macdonald went to Law, an actor best known these days for his sidekicking Robert Downey Jr. - Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes - in the mega-box-office detective reboots.

"To be honest, he was not at the top of the list," Macdonald says of Law. "He just doesn't feel like he's this macho, authoritative leader-type."

But that was before he and Macdonald met.

"I've had experiences in the past, like when I made The Last King of Scotland with Forest Whitaker [as the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin]. I thought Forest Whitaker was totally wrong, no point in meeting him, he's far too sweet, gentle - and so often you are wrong. So, if somebody really likes something and wants to do it, you should meet. You know, people get typecast."

Law, says the director, was passionate about transforming himself.

"Jude put on a lot of weight, and muscle, and shaved his head and lowered his voice," to play this disgruntled, driven captain. "He's a man of few words," says Macdonald about the character of Robinson. "But you get that feeling when you walk into a room that you know this guy is in charge. And Jude just threw himself into it. . . . I think people will be quite surprised."

Catching the Oscar contenders. Of the eight Best Picture nominees for the 2015 Academy Awards - three weeks away, on Feb. 22 - six are currently in theaters: American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper, catching flak from left and right, and bagging a bundle while doing so; Birdman, whose complete title is Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), with Michael Keaton leading a cast of soaring players; The Imitation Game, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the World War II codebreaker and condemned homosexual; Selma, with David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr.; The Theory of Everything, with Eddie Redmayne as theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking; and Whiplash, about an out-of-control music teacher (J.K. Simmons) and his tormented protégé (Miles Teller).

That leaves Richard Linklater's epically ambitious, modestly told Boyhood, a chronicle of growing up in 21st-century Texas, and Wes Anderson's between-the-wars all-star screwball gem, The Grand Budapest Hotel, to see. Boyhood, which was rereleased in select theaters after its six Oscar nominations were announced, has disappeared from local marquees, but it is available on DVD and Blu-ray, and on various streaming platforms. The Grand Budapest Hotel has been out on DVD and Blu-ray since June.

For the Oscar completists out there, the Academy Award-nominated shorts in the animated and live-action fields are currently playing at the Ritz Bourse. Both programs are strong - live-action especially so.

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@Steven_Rea