Astonishing film puts a human face on inhuman horror.

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2005)

For those unfamiliar with the film, Downfall portrays the last two weeks of the Nazi government flitting from the bunker beneath the Chancellery to the civilian bomb shelters to the embattled streets of the ruined capital.
It's astonishing achievement is to put a human face to some of the most infamous figures in history; it strips away the stereotypes and hyperbole and absurd dramatics to let you see the people behind the caricatures without diminishing the horrors they wrought. It brings home the meaning of Hannah Arendt's chilling phrase, "the banality of evil". Yet the film never descends into banality for more than a few minutes, and always to contrast it with the chaos and brutality that evil engenders.
Bruno Ganz is brilliant in his portrayal of Hitler; you can see the charm and charisma that won people to him and the monster that dwelt within. Unlike earlier portrayals which dwelt on the injections and sera he used, Ganz shows a palsied dictator with full command of his intellect (if not his emotions) right to the end. This is more horrifying than seeing a drug-addled psychopath as has become stereotypical in movies on the Third Reich... though sometimes the horror takes time to settle in, as it did for many who met the dictator in person. Ganz's Hitler is not mad but deeply in denial of the consequences of his actions and so wed to his doctrine of the fuererprincip that he is incapable of understanding defeat. His chilling switches between compassion for those in his immediate surroundings and utter ruthlessness towards everyone else are made all the more terrifying as a result, as is his repeated refusal to shoulder any blame for the disasters and desertions around him.
As is entirely appropriate, the film focuses on Hitler; however, it does so mainly through the eyes of his private secretary Traudl Junge (played by Alexandra Maria Lara). The film begins and ends with a voice-over by the real-life Junge (not to be missed) and the action starts by showing, as a prologue, the young Junge's application and interview for the job in 1942. We see in her the unthinking loyalty shown to her leader, often against her better judgment; though she plainly wishes to leave the bunker, she finds herself unable to do so until after the dictator's suicide. Lara's performance is overshadowed by Ganz's but this is no reflection upon her skills; and once we see her leave the Bunker we get a much clearer demonstration in her acting ability as she navigates the ruins to safety.
We see the horrors of the final battle primarily through the character of Peter Krantz (Donevan Gunia), a twelve-year-old awarded with the Iron Cross in Hitler's last birthday review of the troops for destroying two Soviet tanks. Krantz's desperate eagerness to strike at the enemy gives way, after a final and horrible defeat, to a child-like retreat to home and family only to see it torn apart; the irony is that it's not at the hands of vengeful Russian troops, but by Nazi vigilantes punishing "desertion" and disloyalty.
Juliane Kohler's Eva Braun shows just how shallow and banal people in high places can get. A party girl trapped in a holocaust, we see her cling to alcohol and music and routine distractions to shut out the horror. More horribly, she succeeds... her stunning (and yet entirely believable) reversal from weeping petitioner when her brother-in-law is about to be shot for desertion to obedient bride of Hitler takes the breath away. Kohler doesn't let us see much of what's inside Braun simply because there's so little there in the character; Braun is an empty shell who fills herself with the attention of others, a mere veneer of vivacity around a human void as shown by her chatty final testament (narrated over a sequence of soldiers and civilians dying brutally in the rubble above).
Diametrically opposed, yet in strange harmony, is Corinna Harfouch's portrayal of Magda Gobbels. She is coldly intelligent and powerful yet entirely subservient to her fuehrer. Her poisoning of the children to "save" them from a world without Nazism is gut-churningly impossible to shut out; her shrugging off of a comforting touch by husband Joseph Gobbels (Ulrich Matthes) afterward followed by a studious application to a game of solitaire is just as wrenching, as is her pathetic final plea to a suicidal Hitler to flee the city. Matthes' doctrinaire yet emotional portrayal of the Propaganda Minister is also chilling, as is his strange helplessness and inability to face the deaths of family and leader.
The other performances in the film are all excellent; I only avoid mentioning further details to keep the length of this review manageable. See the film to see the dedication of the doctors within and the bizarre mix of power and powerlessness, courage and poltroonery, and insight and vapidity in the assembled generals.
The set dressing is thorough and good; militaria enthusiasts will see great attention to detail shown in the costuming, though alas there are some minor deficits in equipment that admittedly only those who have studied the period closely will notice. The sound is superbly authentic.
I'll wind this down by saying that the movie succeeds in its goal of bringing home the human face of an inhuman tragedy. I won't forget this film.