an unblinking visceral experience

Rating: 10/10 (23 June 2005)

I am almost 50 and very familiar with the iconography of WWII. I even lived in West Berlin for several years in the 1980s, and in a prosaic way perhaps this film merely adds to the canon. But, for me it is the flawless performance of Bruno Ganz, that is the key to the power of this film. You actually believe Ganz is Hitler and the film's close attention to the monster as a human simply amplifies the deep rooted madness, the inhumanity, the cruelty of the man and thereby the underlying evil of the regime. But words are inadequate to explain Downfall. This is pure cinema: slow, cool and deliberate. I need to see this film again at least twice more. Please see this film.