Downfall Movie Review:


Slow-moving but not boring for its hundred-fifty-five minutes, this macabre stately dance of death compels a species of sympathy in spite of any audience’s pre-conditioned, and deservedly reinforced, repulsion. Its title three-pronged, “Downfall” depicts the disintegration of a recently invulnerable army built for a thousand years, the fall into misery of an overbearing people once masters of its continent, and the human collapse of monsters into bickering recrimination and insanity.

Third feature from German television’s Vienna-based Oliver Hirshbiegel, and an Oscar entry for foreign film, Downfall is being compared to made-for-TV “Das Boot,” filmed on the same Munich Bavaria Studios soundstage. Like that submarine movie and Hirshbiegel’s 2001 “Das Experiment,” the current film achieves a sense of claustrophobia, in besieged Berlin, particularly the Chancellery bunker where the Führer and his staff grasp at straw hopes for a saving miracle during the last twelve days of World War Two.

Relying on natural source light even for exteriors -- St. Petersburg ironically filling in for 1945 Berlin -- and largely handheld cameras that enter the four-walled set in the cluttered underground quarters, Cinematographer Rainer Klausmann and Production Designer Bernd Lepel highlight a concentration on the lives of those confined in the bunker, whose sallies out into the statued gardens are cut by artillery explosions. Despite numerous scenes of street fighting, child soldiers, civilian panic, vigilante SS death squads and surgeons amputating in makeshift hospitals, the focus is squarely on the Führer and those surrounding him in these final hours.

There is thus an emotional depth -- especially praiseworthy given the subject and the country -- lacking in, say, Germany’s earlier “Stalingrad” or the British TV “The Death of Adolf Hitler.” Conceptually, much is seen through the eyes of twenty-five-year-old Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), the Leader’s private secretary for whom he has a tender, grandfatherly concern. A few opening minutes show her being personally chosen in 1942 because she is a “Münchnerin,” and a brief coda interview fifty-seven years later has her reflecting on her and the German people’s guilt in not seeing, or wanting to see, the fate of European Jews.

But although there are scary anti-Semitic rants, and although sweet-faced Traudl often obliquely observes goings-on, the chilling center is, not once again the Holocaust, but, rather, the characters of Hitler and some few of his lieutenants. Basing his script on historian Joachim Fest’s “The Downfall: Inside Hitler’s Bunker,” writer-producer Bernd Eichinger puts his story together through Junge’s memoirs, “Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary,” and we are horrified and yet glued to the result.

The fascination comes about through a number of outstanding performances. Not depending on the naturally built-in horror of his character, Swiss Bruno Ganz is courageous in reflecting the deepening dementia and betrayal paranoia of the palsied dictator who physically hunches and shrinks before our eyes, a contrast to Eva Braun’s (Juliane Köhler) hysterical gaiety and humanizing revelation of hatred for the dog Blondi and mixed feelings for her new husband. A strange foil to them are the Goebbels, pathological fanatics who are even more terrifyingly twisted and static: beauty Magda’s (Corinna Harfouch) uncharacteristic emotional plea to Hitler only underscores her unnatural iciness, and cadaverous Propaganda Minister Joseph (Ulrich Matthes), “crippled in body and soul” in the words of Thomas Mann.

Some important figures in the actual historical drama are not emphasized, e.g. Himmler (Ulrich Noethen) and Bormann (Thomas Thieme), while recurring episodes recounting the plights of Hitler Youth Peter Kranz (Donevan Gunia) and his doomed father (Karl Kranzkowski), or of Professor Schenck (Christian Berkel), are unnecessary and, though intended to enlarge overall scope, merely detract from the main drama. But, like the deadly serpent’s stare, “Downfall” hypnotizes, as, almost against our will, we are drawn to a human consideration of the unimaginable un-human.



Donald Levit

Based on the memoirs of Hitler's personal secretary (memorably recorded in the 2002 documentary Blind Spot), this painstakingly researched film recounts the final days of the Third Reich in a vividly powerful way.

Traudl Junge (Lara) is a young woman genuinely intrigued by the chance to work for the Fuhrer (Ganz), even though she has her doubts. In 1945, after working closely with him for more than two years, she's in his Berlin bunker as the Soviet Army closes in. Over those final days, she watches Hitler's steely resolve dissolve into suicidal paranoia--taking his wife Eva (Kohler) with him, as well as his right-hand man Goebbels (Matthes) and his wife (Harfouch) and children.

Significantly, the filmmakers allow Adolf Hitler to be portrayed as a human being rather than a monstrous villain. As a result, he's much more menacing--callous, idealistic, fiery, intelligent, stubborn, obsessed and more than a little mad. Ganz's edgy and mischievous performance brings him to life unlike any previous film incarnation--and the result is jaw-dropping. Delusions of both victory and betrayal cloud his mind and infect everyone around him.

It also helps that the film is impeccably assembled. There are countless characters, but director Hirschbiegel and writer Eichinger help us identify with the salient ones. Lara is excellent as Junge, who's little more than an observer. But even this is powerful, because the film is bookended with actual clips of Junge that crackle with urgent resonance. Other standouts include Harfouch's Magda Goebbels, with her reluctant but unstoppable resolve, Kohler's cheery-but-shadowed Eva Braun and Kretschmann as Eva's tormented brother-in-law Fegelein.

Each character has a specific reaction to both the events of these last days and what they know of Hitler's actions during the war (that most choose cyanide capsules and/or a self-inflicted gunshot tells us a lot!). The film feels almost startlingly real, abandoning gloss for intensity and humour. Battle sequences are terrifying, and a constant sense of comedy, irony and desperation keep it all on firm footing. This is an important film that has a lot to say to us right here and now. It's also notable that this is Germany's first film about Hitler in nearly 50 years.

Rich Cline

Robert Altman once said that if every movie were like its trailer, every movie would be exactly the same. The TV ads for Oliver Hirschbiegel’s
“Downfall,” starring Bruno Ganz as Hitler, are making it look like an action war movie about heroes and villains. There are a handful of explosions in the movie, and all of them are in that ad – and little else. Those expecting violence and a neatly packaged message may be disappointed, or perhaps, like me, surprised by the movie’s insights, depths and power.

The movie does, certainly, have scenes of carnage and battle – how could a movie set in Berlin in the last days of World War II not? – but the majority of the story unfolds in the claustrophobic rooms and corridors of Hitler’s bunker. The movie follows the stories of Hitler, Eva Braun, Traudl Junge, Hitler’s private secretary, and a doctor whose conscience gets the better of him.

Hitler has been represented in countless other movies, and he is usually shown as a caricature of evil, or a mocking imitation (most famously in
Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”). Ganz’s performance surpasses them all; it surpasses imitation, and he presents Hitler as human, as a paradox, as a man affected by both evil and madness. There is a pre-title scene where he stands upright in his early days in power, as he hires a secretary. He has a certain charm over women and, later, we see the way that children, too, adore him; ‘Uncle Hitler,’ they call him. Later, as the end of the war looms, we see the cruel way he presides over his maps and diagrams, ordering troops into certain death. He is so cut-off from
humanity that his view is that if Berlin falls, its inhabitants do not deserve to live. His back becomes hunched as he barks out orders, his hands darting in all directions; its astonishing to consider that this is the same actor who was so serene and introverted in Wim Wender’s “Wings of Desire.”

The two main criticisms I have heard made of “Downfall” are that it is not historically accurate, and that Hitler becomes too human; too sympathetic. “Downfall” may not include all the facts, but it is not propaganda; it has no political motives or agenda. Its motives are to help the audience question situations and events that are beyond the grasp of most modern people’s understanding. Movies are not the medium for fact; the truth of “Downfall” is in the way it sums up the conflicting feelings of a deceived and confused people.

What would have been wrong and ‘inaccurate’ would be to deny the fact that Hitler was a person, and not just an evil force, like something from a comic book. I’m not trying to say he was not an evil person; just that an evil person is still a person.

Yes, it is a ‘troubling’ movie, as Stanley Kauffman pointed out in his review. How could it not be? What use would a movie which showed Hitler as lacking humanity have? What interest would it have? The movie is being criticised where it should be praised; it does not manipulate the audience, or tell you how to feel. That’s where its power comes from. Watching the real Traudl Junge at the movie’s end, I had tears in my eyes. It’s difficult to say what is so moving about the film. When Hitler dies, we do
not sympathise with him; in fact we feel a certain relief, because it means the end is in sight. His way out was an easy one, but the others had to live the rest of their lives with a burden on their conscience. Traudl Junge liked Hitler as a person, and
that was her own downfall.

Adam Whyte

 

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