Downfall [DVD]
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Movie Reviews of Downfall [DVD]
Movie Review: Fascinating and uncompromising look at the final days
Summary: 5 Stars
It was agreeable to see Hitler reduced to a bent, defeated, raving madman, and there is no question that Bruno Ganz looked the part. The endearments he gave to the children and to his bunker mates contrasted horrifically with his plan for them and his "love" for the German people. In a sense the way the final days are presented in this film reminded me of what the victims of the Nazis suffered, and that was also apropos and agreeable. Still most people do not like to see human suffering even to those who may, by all that is right, have it coming; and so it was essentially a depressing experience to watch this film.
Alexandra Maria Lara, who played Hitler's last personal secretary, Traudl Junge, provided the only bright spot in this necessarily grim picture. She is a fine actress, but somehow she seemed too normal, too smart actually to be the sort of worshipful underling that she must have been. Incidentally, it is from the book by the real Traudl Junge, Biz sur letzten Stunde, and from Joachim Fest's Der Untergang that this movie was adapted. The fine screenplay was written by Bernd Eichinger. Junge appears at the beginning of the film from an interview in 2001, a year before her death, to say a few words and at the end where she explains that she is essentially not that naive young person she once was who should have looked further than the fuhrer's face to see what was really going on. But she was with Hitler for three years and knew his philosophy well. Truth is she was so pleased to be his secretary that she turned a deaf ear to the truth that was in front of her.
Of course she was hardly the only one. An entire nation was seduced and led down the path to genocide, humiliation, starvation and near-starvation, and ignominious defeat. One thing the film does to help us understand how this could have happened is to show the blind loyalty that even some of the highest ranking officers felt toward Hitler regardless of his bumbling, his stupidity and his blatant disregard for the feelings and lives of anyone who got in his way--his essential immorality. Some say there was something in the German character that accounts for this blind obedience to authority regardless of how corrupted and evil that authority might be. Maybe in a more pluralistic and multicultural society something like this could not happen. There might be something to that, but I doubt it. Too many monsters have grown in too many different soils and in so many different cultures, I am persuaded it could happen anywhere, but perhaps not as easily and as completely as it happened in Germany.
It is interesting that Oliver Hirshbiegel, who directed, did not show the Red Army atrocities as they stormed into Berlin. I don't think he wanted to dilute the sense of the moral culpability of the German people.
I was also struck by Hitler's obsession with loyalty. This is how all dictators, warlords and, unfortunately, some respected heads of state operate: they demand unquestioned loyalty, and they ruthlessly eliminate anyone they suspect of anything but that unquestioned loyalty while rewarding the loyal. And so in such governments the head of state becomes surrounded by sycophants and toadies who tell him what he wants to hear and who live in fear of their own lives should they somehow be seen as disloyal. Indeed they sneak around trying to undermine others in other to protect themselves. They live in secrecy amid lies, intrigue and murder.
The film is long, 155 minutes, the bunker is dreary and most of the characters are sickies of the worse sort. We as an audience are reduced to those who see inside a cave, the floor covered with bat guano crawling with despicable creatures who feed off of one another. The stench is overwhelming. We watch transfixed for a while at the ugly, unsavory spectacle and then we turn away.
Can it happen again? Can it happen here? Let's hope not, but that freedom that the right assures us is not free requires more than loyalty. It requires vigilance and a willingness to speak out, the kind of vigilance that can see the danger when the government begins to deal almost exclusively in lies and misinformation, that invades other countries for dubious gain, deals in propaganda and points fingers at perceived enemies and promotes only those loyal to the leader instead of those most qualified.
(I said I would write this review without mentioning a certain personage, and I did, but the allusions are probably more than obvious.)
See this for veteran Swiss-German actor Bruno Ganz who gave a fine performance as Hitler.
Movie Review: The Finest Historical Film in Many Years
Summary: 5 Stars
"Downfall" is easily one of the best historical films I have seen in a long time. The film is insightful, bold, creative, and fascinating, but in a manner devoid of any sentiment or sensationalism. Its style is one of `realism' and despite the problems that can so easily arise when art attempts to be `real', "Downfall" manages to come across as brutally honest in all that it attempts. The fact that the film is German only heightens my respect for it and makes me wish that those of us in North America could be half as honest and plain spoken of our own checkered past. Some may be turned away by the length of the film (around three hours) or by its subtitles (although such misapprehensions need hardly be pandered too), but I assure all that the film never drags, never wastes a scene or a moment, and handles its subject with a level of talent and maturity rarely seen in film.
It takes a certain amount of skill to adequately handle the tricky job of attempting to take history and make cinematic fiction of it, and this film has more than its fair share. The direction is precise and focused, and the acting simply superb. Especially good is Alexandra Maria Lara as Hitler's personal secretary. Her character begins as a naïve outsider, in awe of Hitler as a figure of power, only to end as confused and torn as so many of the others: loyal still to the man himself, and yet repulsed and left lost by the raving figure he has become. The film is interested is depicting the ways in which those closest to Hitler negotiated his overbearing presence, and it is through Maria Lara that we see how complicated this balance could be. Hitler himself is played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz, who expertly handles Hitler's role in the film, which is complex and subtle in so many remarkable ways. Hitler is at this point in 1945 losing control, both of his ferocious personality and the situation he has created. The man himself is now beyond repair and it is more his ideas, and the way in which the other characters react to them, that is the focus of the film. Ganz understands this and instead of overplaying this so easily overplayed character, he understates the role in such subtle ways as to render him almost irrelevant to the situation. Hitler is a ghost in the film, an empty shell even before his body is burned, and for the filmmakers and Ganz to recognize and so aptly employ this approach is one of their greatest triumphs.
A question that kept coming to me while watching "Downfall" was: what is the point of the film? Why make it? Is it meant to be a record of history, and, if so, to what end? I believe this is an important question of any film that claims ties to history. I am always somewhat skeptical of historical films in general, as they tend to oversimplify or give too much validity to a notion of progressive history, and end up compromising any mature notions of the complexity and fluidity of history for the sake of storytelling. "Downfall" certainly works hard to be as accurate an account of the last days of the Third Reich as possible, but still seems to recognize its limitations as a fictional and artistic rendering of an actual place and time in history, and of the idea of `history' itself. It strives to reduce all sensationalism and myth and to instead focus on depicting its characters and story with an appropriate amount of careful insight. The film is more an example of historical theory than fact, and uses its own artistic approach to history in a way that never seems inappropriate in its claims to realism. There is a warning within the film, to be sure, of fanaticism and its extremes, but it never comes across as preachy or false, and is presented in a subtle enough fashion to make it ultimately rewarding to reveal.
"Downfall" is great both as an exercise in cinematic history, and as a work of cinema itself. So many of its scenes are so rich is meaning and effect that one cannot begin to do them justice in a review, but let it be said that scenes such as the murder of Goebbel's children and the depraved Romanesque `parties' of Eva Braun are among the most memorable of recent years. I hate to gush this way over a film, and I hate also to fall into the trap of praising anything which happens to be foreign, but try as I might I can say no ill word against this finely crafted film. Perhaps the most critical thing I can say is that it all too clearly shows the failures of so many other films of its type and puts to shame such North American dreck as the recent "Hitler: Rise to Evil". I hope to see many more films in the recent future with as much maturity in their approach to history as "Downfall".
Movie Review: Based on "The Bunker" and "Until the Final Hour"
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a terrific movie, one of the most historically accurate movies ever made about Hitler's final days. Just the fact that Hitler is finally seen ranting and raving in the original German (instead of the usual British accent in three other movie versions of Hitler's final days) really clinches the realism - there is nothing like the crisply harsh and guttural German language to give emphasis to what Hitler must have been really like. Bruno Ganz gives an incredible performance as Hitler.
In the final credits of the movie, the filmmakers name two books as the source material for this movie: "Until the Final Hour" and "Inside Hitler's Bunker". I think they did this because the authors of both books were German, and the filmmakers wanted this to be a wholly German inspired film.
It is apparent as we watch this movie that the final days of Hitler are shown from the viewpoints of a short list of eyewitnesses. And so the viewpoint of Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, in this movie is indeed derived from her book "Until the Final Hour".
However, as noted by a reviewer for the book "Inside Hitler's Bunker", Joachim Fest's book has little to do with this movie. Fest published his book in 2004, long after most of the principle sources for the history of the final days of Hitler had died, and could not have put together such a detailed account from first hand interviews.
Instead, that job had been accomplished by James O'Donnell, who located over 250 eyewitnesses to Hitler's final days, and communicated with over 100, and interviewed about 50. He did this in the 1970's, and published "The Bunker" in 1978, while these witnesses were still alive. Once you read this book, it is easy to identify the eyewitness accounts described by O'Donnell in this movie - they include vignettes taken from his interviews of Albert Speer, Dr. Schenck, General Mohnke, Otto Guensche, and Rochus Misch.
Many of the stories in this movie seem so surreal, absurd, and over the top that initially they felt like the products of an overly imaginative screenwriter. However, read "The Bunker", and you find out that even more crazy things happened, and were left out by the filmmakers.
For example, General Fegelein was not just roaring drunk at his arrest, he was so uncontrollably and obscenely drunk that General Mohnke refused to continue with his court-martial, and so instead Fegelein was hauled off by the Gestapo and executed, probably in a cellar. O'Donnell also speculates that the womanizing Fegelein may have been the dupe of a female British spy.
Traudl Junge and Gerda Christian were both raped by Russian soldiers during their escape from Berlin, a fact mentioned by O'Donnell and left out of both the movie and Junge's book. Current German-Russian political sensitivities undoubtedly played a role (this movie was ironically filmed in St. Petersburg, the former Leningrad).
As O'Donnell's book points out, the eyewitness accounts frequently differed on how certain events transpired. On a few occasions, the movie's choice of depiction of certain events contradict other, more reliable eyewitness accounts. O'Donnell's book does an excellent job of sorting all of these possibilities out.
As an example, the filmmakers chose the version described in Traudl Junge's book to depict the moment when Hitler shot himself, a more dramatic version where Junge recalls hearing the gunshot while she is with the Goebbels children. But, as James O'Donnell explains in detail, the two most trustworthy eyewitnesses outside Hitler's door when he shot himself did not hear the gunshot, and could not have heard it, because Hitler's room was heavily fortified, sealed off, and soundproofed. Knowing this, Hitler had instructed them to enter the room after ten minutes had passed.
The most dramatic moments from the movie can all be found in "The Bunker" - Gen. Weidling ordered to report to Hitler's Bunker to be shot, and then getting promoted instead by Hitler; Professor Ernst Grawitz, a doctor, blowing himself and his family up with grenades at dinnertime; Magda Goebbels coolly laying down a hand of solitaire right after killing her children with cyanide; Ambassador Hewel and Lieutenant Stehr blowing their brains out right at the moment that surrender is announced by an approaching German Colonel.
A great movie overall, made even better with a reading of "The Bunker" by James O'Donnell, the real companion sourcebook for this movie.
Movie Review: A portrait of a madman
Summary: 5 Stars
There's a lot going on in this incredibly powerful German film about the last days of Hitler. Primarily told from the perspective of Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), Hitler's infamous personal secretary, Downfall is all about the fall of Berlin as Hitler (Bruno Ganz) goes through the motions of masterminding fantasy counterattacks and disintegrating mentally.
When his inner circle of generals and confidants begin to realize that they're losing the war, their allegiances to The Fuehrer begin to fracture and disintegrate, while the average German citizenry is left to cope with the out and out horror of a full scale Russian attack. As the Allies get close to Berlin, the story shows what it must have been like to be trapped in Hitler's bunker, to be caught up in wave after wave of shelling, and to realize, that if it is a choice of getting caught or suicide, taking one's life is the only option.
Outside the bunker, we follow a variety of subplots involving a 13-year-old Hitler Youth named Peter who receives a medal from Hitler shortly before all hell breaks loose, and an impossibly noble army medic Dr. Schenk (Chrstian Berkel), who disobeys his orders and stays in Berlin to provide treatment to the locals. But the main dramatic impetus takes place inside Hitler's palatial fortress where he rants and raves at his most powerful leaders as he stands over maps, manipulating nonexistent divisions, desperately trying to turn his forces around to protect Berlin from the barrage of enemy attack.
The high-ranking Nazi's are portrayed as a nervous, sweaty lot who are either ready to cut their losses and betray their leader or are just fed up and disillusioned with the whole process. Heinrich Himmler (Ulrich Noethen) and Albert Speer (Heino Ferch) both beg Hitler to leave Berlin for the safety of German civilians, while Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) - a square-jawed conflicted wimp whose wife constantly prods him to do the Reich thing - tries in vain to stand up for the "noble" ideals of National Socialism in the face of crippling defeat.
But it is the portrayal of the women that is the most affecting and perhaps the most firmly drawn: The fresh faced and beautiful Lara as Traudl Junge is so devoted to Hitler that she treats him like a father, and in the face crippling sense of disillusionment, becomes the singular reminder of how anyone could have fallen for Hitler's false promises in the first place. Juliane Kohler is superb as the ditzy and flighty Eva Braun, who is so obsessed with maintaining stoicism in every situation, that she even gets drunk and demands swing music and dancing as the shelling outside the bunker only increases.
But the most powerfully sinister performance belongs to Corinna Harfouch as the benevolent purposeful Magda Goebbels. She's a one kind of political wife, who, while hysterically begging Hitler to leave Berlin, also possesses a steely and determined resolve to spare her six children from living "in a world without National Socialism." The most horrific scene in the film is when this calmly psychotic and resolute woman sedates her children with "special medicine."
Much has been made of director, Oliver Hirschspiegel's efforts to portray Hitler as a somewhat sympathetic character. The film certainly shows him vacillating between moments of intense madness and tender kindness. Consideration is enthusiastically given to those people who believed whole-heartedly in the Nazi party and who have thoroughly devoted themselves to it. But as he blames the German people for failing him and blithely announces that they deserve death and congratulates himself for ridding the country of scourge of the Jewish, the film finally shows him up for what he really was.
Ganz gives a brave performance in a showcase role imbuing Hitler with sure-handed mix of sadness, anger, craziness, and eventually false hope. Hitler is always recognizably human, if still disreputable, and Ganz never shies away from showing both facets of his complex personality. And as the movie steadily revolves around his moods, his final decent seems to bring Berlin itself to madness.
It has never ceased to amaze me that for all the death, destruction and mayhem that was caused, not once did Hitler or any of his cohorts ever express regret or sorrow at the terrible results of their ghastly and appalling world-historical project. Mike Leonard August 05.
Movie Review: Probably the Most Important Recent Film on Hitler and the Third Reich
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is a truly amazing piece of work. Historically well researched, all of the major players are present and play their part in these, the last days of the Reich, as are all of the emotions one would anticipate as the armies of Stalin close in on the once proud city of Berlin.
As the battle rages closer and closer to the heart of Berlin, Hitler (and the residents of Berlin) react with delusional detachment. Hitler insists to his sycophants in the bunker that this invasion so deep into the capital of the Reich is all a ploy - a decoy for a final assault by the German armies that will break the back of the Russians and turn the tide of the war. The architects of the Reich - Himmler, Speer, Fegelein, Hess (offstage) and others - realize the futility of the situation and begin to rapidly maneuver to save their skins (Himmler even asks Fegelein whether he should give Roosevelt the Nazi salute or shake his hand as he tenders Germany's surrender), while the personal staff of Hitler and the citizenry of Berlin descend into a surreal, macabre festivity (as Trudl Junge, played to naïve perfection by Alexandra Maria Lara, says "it's like a dream, which you cannot escape, which never ends"). As the situation's genuine hopelessness becomes overwhelmingly apparent, the residents of the bunker begin to casually discuss the best means of suicide over dinner, again adding to the surreal air of the portrayal. Frau Goebbels' insistence that her children "cannot conceivably grow up in a world without National Socialism" rings similar of other more modern political and ideological sound bites and her depraved subsequent acts look similar to several other cinematographical events presented in a more heroic light.
What truly forces this film out of the crowd of other films dealing with Hitler and the fall of the Reich is its portrayal of the various Nazi participants as human beings, rather than diabolical or demonic entities of evil incarnate. I've always felt that portrayal of Hitler and his cronies as slavering maniacs (Hitler - The Rise of Evil, with Robert Carlyle, is the worst of the lot) and the German soldiers under their command as mindless automatons who shoot wherever they point does history a tremendous disservice. Portraying them as "fantasy/horror" villains of obvious evil demeans and diminishes the historical lesson to be learned, and implies that such characters are easily recognizable. Having lived abroad for the last 14 years, I've never been able to accept that the well-educated German people elected and supported a slavering lunatic - spittle smearing maniacs have a tough time appealing to the general populace, particularly an astute one. In a culture where "humanizing" Hitler is something to apologize for, it's easy to forget that Hitler was, in fact, just that - human - not some fantasyland villain or monster.
Bruno Ganz's portrayal of Adolph Hitler is almost grandfatherly, a seemingly benevolent man whose hands shake from palsy (the later stages of syphilis) but who addresses his troops and supporters on a first name basis and constantly exudes charm, wit and charisma (at least in the early moments of the film). Here lies the true message and the most important aspect of the film - these men were monsters, but they were human monsters, coupled with minds and visions much greater than the average. Despicable and evil, but, at the same time, great and inspiring. Unlike Carlyle's portrayal of Hitler in Rise of Evil, or Spielberg's/Schindler's List's Amon Goeth (portrayed by Ralph Fiennes), these monsters could pass you on the street and you wouldn't look twice. You'd invite them into your home, perhaps even support them if you did not have history to put them into context. Bruno Ganz's Hitler isn't a man who woke up every morning wringing his hands and sneering villainously, looking forward to doing "evil" during the day. He was committed to a cause and vision, albeit a twisted and corrupt one, who managed to capture the emotions of one of the most well educated countries in the world. As both Hitler and Goebbels remark during the film "The (German) people gave us a mandate. They supported what we have done. I do not pity them for what is to come." The old adage of "Never again!" has to be reviewed in this context. Have states and peoples subsequently been led to do evil by their leaders on the basis of emotion and collective hysteria? If so, will they again?