Hitler was human. And that's the point.

Rating: 10/10 (21 November 2011)

After watching this movie, I was intrigued as to why anyone might have 'hated it', and after reading the relevant IMDb reviews, I think I know. There were actually many reasons given; objections to everything from acting to sets to direction and more, but in light of the movie's evident quality they seemed to be nit-picking at best. The acting is first-rate, as is the rest of 'Downfall'. This is a powerful, gripping movie with characterisations so well-realised (Hitler himself, secretary Traudl, the supremely creepy Josef and Magda Goebbels and many others) they will haunt you. What the 'hated it' reviewers actually didn't like was the humanistic portrayal of Hitler. The hunched, shuffling and twitching 'grandfatherly' Hitler of 'Downfall' is a far cry from the long-familiar vigorous, raving 'madman' incarnations of popular culture. How anyone could have got a 'sympathetic' treatment of Hitler out of this movie is unfathomable. Yes, this Hitler is an ailing, crotchety, prematurely aged and even a vulnerable man; sweet to Eva Braun and his pretty young secretaries, but also the architect of the global madness which has backfired so catastrophically and is even now smashing its way towards him and everyone else hiding in his bunker. It is a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions, and entirely Hitler's doing. All of the executions, infanticide, suicide, revenge atrocities and madness of those last days of the Battle of Berlin are the end product of decades of his work. One of the most vehement 'hated it' criticisms was that the past crimes of the Third Reich (principally the Final Solution) were not detailed in the screenplay, but there is little need to gratuitously invoke the Holocaust with this tsunami of death, destruction and insanity bearing down on Hitler, his associates and his beloved Germany. To leave it as a barely-mentioned background feature makes its creator seem even more reprehensible, not less; because it is as if he didn't care about anything but his place in history. In the end, he is crushed and even tearful that it all ended this way, but he cries for himself, not the millions he has caused to die. Hitler has a human face, and is all the more terrifying for it.