best docu-drama in years

Rating: 9/10 (31 December 2005)

I got to see 'Der Untergang' only now, on DVD, but maybe this is the right format for it. The film is a docu-drama, with all the goo things and the limitations of the genre, and as a docu-drama is better to be seen on the small screen than in a theater.
And it is one of the best docu-dramas I saw in years, maybe the best. Director Oliver Hirschbiegel brings to screen the last days of the Nazi regime and of its leaders, crowded in a bunker with a seemingly infinite Web of corridors, terrorized by the louder and louder noises of the approaching Red Army attacks and living the last phantasms of the nightmare their sick minds created, the nightmare that swallowed the whole world.
A lot was written and said about Bruno Granz's rendition of Hitler. There is no Oscar for no-English speaking actors, and it's a good thing, because Granz deserves not a Oscar but a Nobel prize for acting, if such thing existed. Hitler's madness exceeded the limits of human understanding, it was madness at history level. Was Hitler a man, or the incarnation of Devil in man's skin? His success in turning his nation into a Evil Empire and half of the world in hell was the result of a mix of historic context, but also the result of a magnetic personality, that Granz analyzes and recomposes with art. Granz's Hitler is a master in human manipulation, the majority of his foes stay devoted to him until the last moment. Granz's Hitler is charismatic, physically sick and mentally mad, he lives in a world that mixes messianic faith with murderous hate for his enemies and especially against the Jews, a world fill of phantasms and military fantasies. He is completely isolated from reality, as all dictators, because dictators inspire fear, fear inspires lies, and you cannot build strategies on lies.
Almost all acting is superb. The Nazi leaders, one more sinister than the other are brought to life with art. Julianne Kohler's Eva Braune is a frivole, living the day in the shade of the Great Leader. The Goebbels pair played by Ulrich Matthes and Corinna Harfouch are sick and fanatic, they commit the absolute family crime by killing their children before taking their own lives, and killing with them the myths of the German Nazi family. There is some controversy abut the image of Albert Speer, the Nazi minister of economy and the architect of what would have been the capital of the 1000 years Reich, the film presents him in a more human light, but life and history was also more understanding with him, making him the only Nazi leader who ended his life in his own bed.
A few words about the character of Traudl Junge, Hitler's young secretary acted by Alexandra Maria Lara. The movie presents her as completely fallen under Hitler and Eva Braun magnetic powers, she is genuinely devastated not by the end of the war but by the personal loss and death of his masters. Only when she gets out of the bunker and sees the smoking ruins of what became of Germany she starts to understand the dimension of the tragedy brought by her superiors to her country and to the whole world. However, the total understanding may have come later, and we understand it when the real Traudl Junge, at his old age tells us, looking into the eyes of the camera 'I should have known!'.
Docu-drama has limits, the purpose and quality lies more in the accurate rendition of the history than in looking for the deeper truth. Still, for whoever sees this film, the last days of Hitler will remain as they are described here. There is no one movie that can encompass all the lessons of history, but this movie made from the German perspective provides a veridical and true version of the human dimension of the absolute horror.