Bruno Ganz IS Hitler!!

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2005)

We all tend to label as "unhuman" everything that's cruel and evil. We always want to make the genocides look like beasts when the truth is that there's nothing more human that the hatred, the sadism, the anger, the thirst for revenge... It's OK, it's only a way to protect ourselves against the idea of someone like us doing such horrible things. But don't you fool yourselves: there are no beasts with capacity for the humiliation and the annihilation but the Homo Sapiens.
This movie, "Der Untergang" (the last days of Hitler in his Berlin bunker among his closest friends and politicians), was not welcomed by German audiences. There are too many bruises that haven't being healed yet. A movie showing Hitler suffering just like everyone else? The Führer acting like a gentleman in front of his personal secretary and taking good care of Goebbels' children? There are too many people that don't want to see such things. Hitler was a monster, he wasn't even human! He couldn't have a heart, he couldn't have loved anyone! Well, Oliver Hirsbiegel (the director of the irregular "Das Experiment") makes clear that the Emperor of the Third Reich was no madman (clinically); he loved Eva Braun, and he suffered in his last days just like everyone whose plans are crumbling down would have suffered (Ok, some plan to build a house in the seaside, some plan to invade Poland... plans, after all).
We watch everything that's going' on in the Berlin underground through the eyes of Miss Junge, the personal Hitler's assistant, one of the few witnesses of those last hours. We can smell the sweat, we can feel the humidity, the terror that Hitler provoked in most of his subordinates, the chaos inside and outside the shelter, the hysterical laughing of those who know that are going to die soon. The portrait of the different personalities there is just superb: Eva Braun, THE lover, living in her world of fantasy; she just wants one more drink and one last dance. Mrs. Goebbels, maybe one of the most terrifying in the history of cinema (and what's not cinema), she seems to be even more extreme that Hitler himself. Those generals afraid of contradicting the Fuhrer, who still waits for some squadron to come and defeat the enemy. Outside, Berlin is on fire. The Russians, which had been invaded a few months before, now they are the invaders and they're gonna get into the centre of the Presedential Palace.
So, this movie is bigger than life. The script and the the artistic direction are just perfect... nothing!! Nothing compared with Bruno Ganz's work He has brought Hitler to life (and I really mean it). A millimetric job, so blended, never falling in the parody. How to play a character whose histrionism and personality goes beyond any kind of limits? Well, Mr. Ganz has the answer to that. The rest of the cast is also outstanding, but Ganz is the genius here. "Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des 3. Reichs", one the best movie ever done about the Holocaust? And without Jews? Well, it looks like, my friends.
*My rate: 10/10