Downfall [DVD]
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Movie Reviews of Downfall [DVD]
Movie Review: Monsterdämmerung
Summary: 5 Stars
Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Downfall," about the last days of Hitler and of the Third Reich, is an extraordinary work. It avoids every single possible pitfall to be "ordinary," to follow expectations, to present caricatures, to judge or preach or give in to any agenda. A great, flawless cast supports Hirschbiegel in his quest for truth and humanity in one of history's most inhuman chapters. (Commercial release of the film is expected next month.)
The exceptional stars of "Downfall" are Bruno Ganz as Hitler, and Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge, Hitler's last secretary, whose diary was used in producer Bernd Eichinger's brilliant script. Another standout in the huge cast is Corinna Harfouch, whose Magda Goebbels - and her businesslike killing of her beautiful children - will haunt you more than any great production of "Medea" has. Juliane Kohler does the impossible by playing a consistent, scatterbrain Barbie of Eva Braun, existing in a rather appealing fun world of her own, facing reality in just one moment - all the more stunning in context.
Ganz, whose portrayal of Hitler is so right and convincing that no one is likely to try to play the role again, attended the screening to receive the 10-year-old festival's first lifetime achievement award; he acknowledged the ovation with a shy and awkward "Thank you."
A big-screen war epic, a blood-curling but strangely intimate dance of death among men and women of various degrees of evil, not abstract monsters, "Downfall" also deals with issues of responsibility and morality, but in a way that such questions arise in real life - mostly peripherally and so easy to push away.
There was just a single instance of "taking sides" by the audience during this first US screening, and it came in a strange, confusing way (just like it would in "real life"). When Hitler orders not to spare the lives of Berlin civilians ("there are no civilians in this ultimate war"), Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) sneers: "It's not like someone imposed it on them - they gave us a mandate."
There was some scattered applause in the Castro, but the vast majority of the audience remained silent, not wanting to score points in support of something both obvious and the deeply, complexly meaningful.
Hirschbiegel (whose previous dozen films were promising enough, but not the extent of this landmark achievement) even manages to provide a small measure of catharsis at the end, engaging deep emotions after two and a half hours of a potentially deadening chronicle. At the very end, after briefly accounting for the post-war fate of each character, and giving statistics such as "50 million people died in the war," the real Traudl Junge - shortly before her death in 2002 - looks into the camera.
She begins by saying that she was very young when she went to work for Hitler and didn't realize the horrors taking place just outside the comfortable bunker - and you cannot help feeling instant, intense hatred - but then the old woman (whom we just managed to overlap in our minds with her young, vivacious self we watched until now) trails off, and says something else.
It was only recently, she says, that she saw a headstone for a woman in Berlin, who was born in the same year with Junge... and who died on the day she went to work for Hitler. "And when I saw that..." she says, with a look in her eye that reveals confusion, fear, knowing and not wanting to know - and the film ends. And you sit there.
Catharsis in not a solution or "elevation"; it is an overwhelming feeling, a mix of grief and something close to understanding. Catharsis doesn't excuse Oedipus or brings Lear back to life, it just makes you *feel* something, unlike the response to "50 million died in the war." "Downfall" does the impossible: it ends on a note of a small measure of catharsis, the miraculous finale to a great film
Movie Review: A few interesting addenda to the fine lead reviews
Summary: 5 Stars
This film alone makes worthwhile all the work it took to learn fluent German. The subtitles are probably about as good as what I could have done, but subtitles and dubbing never quite convey all that is in the original script language. "Sie werden ersaufen in ihrem eigenen Blut!" is translated as "They will drown in their own blood!" The script departed from the usual German word order that parks most verbs (after the first) on the end of the sentence, thus: "Sie werden in ihrem eigenen Blut ersaufen!" This might have been because it underscores Hitler's well-known mastery of squeezing every bit of feeling from his listeners -- he ends the sentence not with the three-syllable word for "drown" but with the potent monosyllable "BLOOD!" Hitler's gift for expression is also manifest in "Ersaufen" instead of the usual "ertrinken" for "drown." "Ersaufen" is a vulgar or less polite way of saying "ertrinken," akin to the better-known replacement of the more polite "essen" for "eat" with "fressen" to describe how animals eat, perhaps the equivalent of "gobble up" or "wolf down." Instead of "trinken" for "drink," "saufen" is more like "guzzle." German, in its agglutinative way, then tacks "er-" on the front to indicate that the action leads to death, so "ertrinken" means "drown" and "ersaufen" is to drown disgustingly or wretchedly. Of course, translators of movie scripts can't get sidetracked into such linguistic intricacy, so "They will drown in their own blood!" is the only reasonable subtitle here, but it does leave out something underscoring that Hitler's facility with language was with him until the end.
Some of the actors besides Ganz looked a great deal like the actual characters they played: Goebbels, Himmler, and Keitel, for instance. However, the ramrod-straight and slender Jodl would not have recognized himself in this film. This was perhaps okay with less well-known characters such as Krebs and Burgdorf, but one of my few (and very minor) quibbles with this film is that it might have worked harder to depict Jodl (and Speer).
To see extensive interviews done 35 years ago with Speer (crafty enough to avoid the Nürnberg neck-stretching accorded to Jodl and Keitel, who didn't shoot themselves as did Krebs and Burgdorf), and especially with a much younger Traudl Junge, and others who recalled the final days in the Führerbunker, get or rent "The World at War (30th Anniversary Edition) (1974)," quite a bargain for 22 hours of video that combines well with "Downfall" in helping understand the events, if it is possible to begin to understand a world gone mad, especially this country gone mad.
Incidentally, in all of Hitler's ravings in this film, other than nuances such as using "ersaufen" instead of "ertrinken," Hitler never uses profanity or obscenities. At one point, someone asks "What do you expect from a non-smoking vegetarian teetotaler?" Hitler and the Nazis tried to promote a healthy lifestyle, and it was in reaction to associations with Nazism that Germany (with the help of a few well-placed research funding incentives from US tobacco companies) has been one of the last European countries to begin to enact laws against smoking in restaurants and public buildings, with one of the highest rates of smoking among women in the world.
I must especially underscore one reviewer's remarks that seeing the sympathetic side of Hitler (Traudl Junge once said that of all the bosses she had in her life, he was the kindest to her) somehow emphasizes the horror in the man and the movement. As Jacob Bronowski says in the "Ascent of Man" sequence where he sifts through his fingers Auschwitz dust that might contain particles of his close relatives, this is what comes of thinking your way is the only way.
Movie Review: Cinematic masterpiece - a must see
Summary: 5 Stars
Bernd Eichinger's 2004 masterpiece "Der Untergang" is in every way a magnificent cinematic achievement deserving all the praise heaped on it by other reviewers here and by critics and audiences throughout the world. This is riveting and utterly convincing drama with five-star performances from all the leads and in particular a career-defining and oscar-worthy performance from Swiss-born Bruno Ganz as Hitler. Ganz is so consistently outstanding he dominates all his scenes. He shows Hitler in all his complexity: how he was able to inspire an almost mystical level of loyalty and fear from so many including his inner circle, most of the army generals and ordinary German citizens right until the end. He even has Hitler's Austrian accent exactly right (this would be lost on the non-German speaking viewer) and mannerisms observed from countless film records including the shaking hands thought to be caused by the progress of Parkinson's disease.
The main focus of the film's action is the drama played out in the Fuhrerbunker as Hitler interacts with Himmler and Fegelein, Albert Speer, various army generals and the dominant and ever-present Joseph Goebbels (played to perfection with cynical malice by Ulrich Matthes). Hitler rages against all who have "betrayed" him (the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, Goering, Himmler, the German people); exhibits maniacal and delusional behaviour by issuing impossible-to-execute orders to phantom military formations which no longer exist, interrupted by occasional periods of insight and lucidity. Others try to maintain some normality in the face of the Armageddon unfolding around them, even as they discuss the best way to kill oneself: cyanide or a shot to the head?
This main narrative is counterbalanced by several well-integrated sub-plots focusing on the hell-on-Earth of the Soviet assault through the streets of Berlin, notably SS surgeon Ernst-Gunther Schenck's (Christian Berkel) attempt, with a subtle mixture of thoroughbred military efficiency and genuine humanitarian sentiment, to organise the medical facilities to care for the thousands of wounded and dying in the city. Some of the Hitler Youth defenders are literally children, assaulting the Soviet tanks with Panzerfaust rocket-grenades and in turn getting killed in droves. SS punishment squads roam the streets seeking deserters, real and imagined, to publicly execute. Chaos and mayhem reign, but National Socialist order must nevertheless be maintained.
The film looks magnificent and utterly real. Despite the focus on theatrical personal interactions inside the bunker, the outdoor street scenes are genuinely cinematic and show the unfolding horror and carnage to perfection.
The only minor issue might be that for the viewer unfamiliar with many of the 20 or historical characters in the film it's difficult, on first viewing, to understand who everyone is and where they fit in to the story. Brief subtitling below a new character on first appearance explaining who he/she is might have helped here. This is one reason why the film is actually more absorbing and enjoyable on second viewing, when the viewer has more familiarity with the characters.
Overall a great, great historical drama based closely on eyewitness accounts which succeeds both as cinema and as drama. Make sure you see the film with original German dialogue as spoken by the actors, and don't be conned into watching an inferior overdubbed version.
A seriously excellent film deserving five stars. For anyone interested in this period of European history or serious about film: see it.
Movie Review: Amazing On Many Levels - Compelling Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Downfall is quite possibly the best war movie ever made. Showing all aspects of German society from Hitler and his high command to the elderly to little kids and how they are reacting to the inevitable defeat. This film strikes at the heart as it portrays a society on the brink of total collapse. Combining brilliant performances with a very well chosen (and accurate looking) cast, and unbelievably realistic sets, Downfall delivers the fury and frustration of the last days of The Third Reich with realism and drama as no other film has done before. Realistic in all aspects and often recreating Deutsche WochenSchau (German Newsreels) to near perfection this movie is not going to disappoint even the sticklers for realism. This is certainly a must see film and while it is certainly not sympathetic to national socialism it provides a rarely seen view of the suffering and trauma that the German people faced under the final days of Hitler's regime.
With dark, yet rich cinematography and a soundtrack that includes constant shelling and gunfire the viewer of this film is quickly immersed in the horror and desperation of a losing battle. While the film's initial scene is in 1942 at the Wolfchanse (Hitler's East Prussian command center) where Traudl Junge, Hitler's final secretary, is interviewed and chosen the rest of the film takes place in and around the Reich Chancelory's main bunker. Fast forwarding to April 20th 1945, Hitler's 56th Birthday the viewer sees a reich in near ruin and a high command who realizes the end is near but is divided in several different camps on how the downfall should occur.
Bruno Ganz playing Adolf Hitler in his final days does an amazing performance. Hunched over, with a nearly uncontrollable left hand, Ganz plays a Hitler with radical mood swings so brilliantly. The supporting cast is equally brilliant and the girl who plays Traudl Junge, from whose eyes the film is portrayed, is very effective and the viewer cant help but harbor some sympathy for her. Among the other roles worthy of mention include Joseph and Magda Goebbels. These two characters are played like the sociopaths that they really were. While I feel that the scene and build up to the murder of there own children was gratuitous they were certainly well played. Also worthy was the role of Albert Speer, he was played remarkably well and we cant help but think of his final defiance at least somewhat heroic.
The film attempts to be as objective as possible and rather than glorifying the Third Reich in any way as it constantly shows the futility of the war. It shows how the total war scenario was despised even by many of Hitler's top Generals. Brutally showing how so many leaders and officers took the coward's way out the film shows very graphically the horrors of war as also shows the death of families widespread suffering and the needless victims of Hitler's Reich.
I recommend this film to all: it portrays the culmination of the biggest event in the 20th century objectively and seriously. It shows that certainly not all Germans during WWII were horrible people, while a few were to the final moment. It is brilliantly made and will put a knot in your stomach from start to end. I cant speak highly enough about this film. While you may be speechless for 10 minutes following the first view it will stick with you and be something often thought about. As twilight finally falls on the tragic history of WWII we should be thankful that such a film is made to help us remember and hold on to our humanity.
-- Ted Murena
Movie Review: Subterranean Machinations
Summary: 5 Stars
Unlike previous film renditions of Hitler's bunker days ("The Last 10 Days" [1973] and "The Bunker" [1981]), "Downfall" is more like a precisely tuned German Time Machine than the tour de force of the Hitler role in previous films. Downfall is based upon accounts from Hitler's personal secretary, Traudi Junge (Check out book: "Until the Final Hour" [2005]) and other resources (Also check out "Soldat: Reflections of a German Soldier" by Siegfried Knappe [1993] and "The Devil's Disciples: Hitler's Inner Circle" by Anthony Read [2004]). Ms. Junge makes a documentary type cameo appearance describing her own naiveté at being drawn in (but never quite apologizes) and the film pretty much revolves around Junge and her nearsighted view of Hitler. However, this film succeeds where almost all accounts of behind the scenes chronicles of Germany at war's end fail. It does this by employing the role of Junge as a typical "German" and how her non-committal becomes an act of ardent support (even doting affection) for Der Führer. In doing so, with strict adherence to all the facts gathered around the "bunker" characters, Hirschbiegel has created a virtual time window into those final days. For anyone interested in these events I cannot but recommend this film.
Bruno Ganz obviously did considerable study of Hitler before taking on the role. Aside from having the body language down, he also delivers Hitler's unique intonation of the German language (anyone familiar with audios or film reels of Hitler's speeches will find the performance downright creepy). In fact, all the characters, though sometimes dissimilar in appearance to their real-life characters, provide thoroughly convincing personas of the historic counterparts. Most notable is Corinna Harfouch in her Media like role as Magda Goebbels. Here, the screen takes the time to briefly portray the strange emotional triangle that existed between Hitler and the Goebbels. Hitler was known to have been extremely fond of Magda and went at lengths to hold that shell of a marriage together when Joseph began to sleep around. However, the film does not go into this or other historical character reconstructions (there simply isn't time) so the unfamiliar viewer may at times miss some undertones to the couple's stern interaction.
In the end, this film does what only one other film (The Man in the Glass Booth [1975], Best Actor nominee Maximilian Schell) has attempted to do, and that is to answer the question as to `why the German people followed Hitler'. As this unfolds the viewer may begin to feel uncomfortable. There appears to be a bond between Traudi Junge, as well as with the often disagreeing General Staff, towards Hitler that transcends simply following-the-leader or even patriotism. In "The Man in the Glass Both" the main character "Goldman" refers to this as the German people's "Love" for Hitler. In "Downfall" this becomes unnerving obvious because you witness what appears to be a sympathetic portrayal of a vile monster. However, this approach provides the most credible portrait because for twelve years this charismatic creature, with engaging blue eyes and social charm, lead Germany through the battlefields of Europe and the dark recesses of mass extinction death camps. In today's world, where numerous countries endeavor towards righteous nationalism and narrow political agendas, this film provides chilling relevance.