Downfall (2004) is an amazing film. Here's an article I did on the movie awhile back:
“I didn’t realize that fate would lead me somewhere I didn’t want to be.
I walked by a memorial plate of Sophie Scholl in the Franz-Joseph-Strasse. I saw that she was about my age and she was executed in the same year I came to Hitler. And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn’t an excuse.”—Traudl Junge
One of the last living survivors of Hitler’s staff, Traudl Junge was the Fuhrer’s personal secretary. At 22, she was very young and did not see or know about his atrocities. When Adolf Hitler moved to his special bunker under the streets of Berlin, Junge lived with him and personally witnessed the events of
Downfall.
This epic film (showing on TMC 8/11) follows the last days of the leader of the National Socialist Party as he slips into disillusion and finally madness as mortars rain down upon his hiding place. Unlike
Saving Private Ryan (1998) this film does not try to manipulate our emotions, rather it presents an unbiased view of WWII from both sides.
Junge, in the documentary
Blind Spot (2003) (the basis for this film and a fine companion piece), shares personal insights into Hitler’s warmth and kindness as well as coldness. We are given for the first time, a balanced picture of this complex man who was a monster, yet somehow induced millions to follow him with an unbelievable fanaticism—the majority to their own deaths. To see his gentleness with Traudl and children and then hear him make calm statements such as: “Compassion is an eternal sin. To feel compassion for the weak is a betrayal of nature.” --is to see a man whose thoughts and actions were totally unhinged from reality.
And yet this is realism. I doubt a more accurate factual picture of WWII has ever been made. The cinematography is wonderful. Shooting in the cramped space of the bunkers and wonderful sets gives us an enclosed trapped feeling and action above ground is especially well done. Special effects are here, but they never take the viewer out of the story, they simply enhance it. Seeing young children (from the Hitler Youth Organization) building barricades and shouldering rifles and grenade launchers taller than themselves is a sobering experience.
Naturally a great film has nothing if the acting is not well played and believable. If you only know Bruno Ganz from the romantic
Wings of Desire (1987), prepare yourself for a shock. His portrayal of Adolf Hitler is one of the most realistic interpretations of a public figure ever committed to celluloid. To see him raving and screaming or crying softly when he knows the war is lost forever is an experience few will ever forget. Alexandra Maria Lara is no less haunting as Junge. She has many parts and scenes where there is no dialogue, but she lets us know what her character is feeling or thinking. The fact that Traudl has our heart and sympathy is a credit to her subtleness with the role.
Downfall is not a happy feel good movie. It is instead a testament of a man and his vision of life that almost destroyed one nation and had designs on the rest of us as well. War is never honorable or glamorous, but is sometimes a necessity and inevitability.
