Death Of an Empire

Rating: 10/10 (17 December 2008)

World War 2 is to a large extent a myth. It is a video game. It is the never ending virtual battle of Normandy. It is a teenager called "killer-x" online fragging n00bs. World War 2 is when the glorious, noble west defeated the Great Satan. World War 2 lasted six years and yet it never ended. We in the west keep finding new Hitlers to kill, new evils to fight. Yet, the World War II is filled with uncomfortable facts. I should know. For my country was allied with the Nazi Germany fighting Soviet Union. And It was the cold Russian winters that broke the Nazi war machine.
That's why I don't watch WW2 movies. Only Das Boot has managed to capture the madness and the futility of war properly. It is only when you have lost everything, that you are forced to come to terms with what you have done.
Der Untergang is the finest war movie I have ever seen in my entire life.
Bruno Ganz is simply mesmerizing as Adolf Hitler. Hitler is the Roman Emperor watching his once mighty Empire come to a bitter end, refusing to accept it. Sanity has been abandoned long time a go. Hitler is moving imaginary armies on a map. Coming up with plans to outflank the Soviet beast that is fast approaching the new Rome, Berlin. Sometimes the devil is overcome with fartherly love towards his flawed little children, who can't perform even the simplest of tasks in his powerful presence. He understands their shortcomings and shows patience. He charms the people and minutes later curses his Generals for betraying him. "The best Germans died long a go! I am surrounded with weaklings!" He yells.
Eva Brauns refusal to come to terms with what is happening (The Empire is ending), is a true testament to human madness. Bombs go off just meters away but she'll be damned before that stops her from dancing and throwing a party. "Why are people so depressing? Let's have some fun!" For a few minutes we see the young ladies go outside the bunker to have a cigarette. We learn that life actually does go on. Bombs go off again and we descend back into the madhouse. Back into the bunker. Mass suicides, decadence of the human soul continue inside Hitlers house of insanity. At least Eva has the love of her life beside her now. Now at the end Hitler is hers.
The reasons why the Nazi regime fought till the bitter end, was because of the allied policy of Unconditional surrender, Morgenthau Plan and World War 1. Not because of some insane loyalty towards a brutal dictator. People rarely like dictators. Der Untergang shows no love towards the dictator either, but for the first time the Dictator is human. And that is the big lesson. The Great Devils are in fact human. They represent the ultimate failure of the human spirit.