Downfall
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Movie Reviews of Downfall
Movie Review: IN THE END, HITLER WAS STILL HUMAN
Summary: 5 Stars
I understand that this powerful film has garnered many accolades and much controversy. Much of the controversy centers around the Nazis actually being portrayed as human. Critics of this film should realize that, in their most desperate hour, everyone -- even monsters -- can feel all those sentiments that all people share. In Hitler's case, he is trapped in his bunker and seeing everything he created, all his ambitious, superman dreams, fall into oblivion. Bruno Ganz turns in a tour de force performance as he presents Hitler's despair and desperation as he knows his end is approaching. Yet, he holds onto faint hope that somehow there will be some divine intervention that if confirm his mastery over the world. And there are the others, those who followed him, even they cannot escape that which makes them human. They cling to their sense of duty and honor to remain grounded. In the powerful scene, where Corinna Harfouch as Frau Gobbels poisons her children, she moves from dutiful Aryan mother, to disgust at the act she has just committed. Then, on the turn of a dime, she restores her sense of duty and plays a game of solitaire. Truly a heart-wrenching moment. And there are many moments like that through this movie, where individuals struggle with their blind devotion to duty and their need to protect that little bit that still makes them human. At the end of the film, the last word is left to Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge. She admits to, at one time, convincing herself that she was uninvolved in all the horrors the Nazis unleashed. But later in life, she suddenly realized she being young and naive is no excuse to separate one from those horrors. For me, her message is clear: In the end, the Nazis were human and, like all humans, we share common bonds with them. Chew on that one for a while.Movie Review: A must-see
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a fantastic film, and a testimony that truly great filmmakers can achieve a lot with very little. One particular scene in this film contains no graphic imagery or even a single word, and yet it sent me on such an emotional roller coaster that I had to pause the movie and calm myself. After 3 days, it's still wedged firmly in my memory, and will haunt me likely till the day I die. It astounded me just how deluded and fanatical some of these people were, until the very end. I don't know about others, but this is what resonated most strongly with me in regards to this film; that one can be so devoted to an idea, so taken with it and unwilling to accept defeat, that they would give and sacrifice absolutely everything to that idea. It's even more astounding given that Hitler's vision of the world was as far from just or benevolent as could get. I daresay this is probably one of the best war dramas you'll ever see, made so by great direction, near-perfect editing, and a fantastic cast. Don't miss it!Movie Review: Amazing film despite the gloss.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the most enthralling and complex films about the fall of the 3rd Reich that I have ever seen. The clips of Traudl Junge were mesmerizing. The main complaint about the film is the gloss over the brutality of it all. For example, Monke was shown to be a much more compassionate character than in reality. Bruno Ganz' portrayal of Hitler was astounding. He received criticism for portraying Hitler as a human. Regardless of your opinion of Bruno's interpretation of the character, his portrayal was convincing. One of the most powerful performances was by Ulrich Matthes as Goebbels. What a cowardly, sinister creature. Matthes captured that inhumanity so well. Movie Review: DOWNFALL IS SHEER BRILLIANCE 9.25 OUT OF 10
Summary: 5 Stars
It's hard to believe that the company that made this incredible film; Constantin Film; also made the excellent Resident Evil films and the not-so-great Fantastic Four movies (bleh). This war movie is absolutely fantastic and well-deserving of the many awards and critical acclaim it received.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT: The year is 1945, and the Russians are closing in on Germany and the Third Reich. So the main leaders of the Third Reich; Adolph Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbel along with his wife and children, and various employees and military leaders hide in a bunker to avoid capture from the Russians. The story is basically told from the point of view from Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, who was in the bunker during the last days of the war and a witness to the downfall of the Third Reich and escaping from the Russians.
MUSIC: There's not much unfortunately, that's what makes this movie flawed.
STORYLINE: This story is well told about these historical events and is beautifully and masterfully carried out.
ENTERTAINMENT: This film is brilliant, and near-perfection. This is one of those movies you have to have real taste for, otherwise you might get bored. It definitely isn't for kids. What makes this film all the more authentic is that the film is in German giving the already amazing feel another injection of compelling drama. This is one of the best war dramas (and dramas in general) ever made, it's compelling, the acting is great, it feels very real, and it is a masterpiece.
OVERALL: You're not going to find a whole lot of foreign films this great, or for that matter, great films in particular (Hollywood really sucks these days; there is virtually nothing good to speak of). Watch this movie, you owe it to your movie-loving self to watch one of the best dramas, best war movies, best foreign movies, and one of the best movies to come out in years. This is not my favorite movie, but this is one of the more better quality films I've watched in a while amid the many stinkers I've watched.
THE GOOD: Great story, great actors, feels authentic, it's brilliant, and it's just a flatout masterpiece.
THE BAD: Very little music.
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 N?rnberg 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 F?hrerbunker, 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.