Milton's West Wing episode

Rating: 10/10 (3 April 2005)

I saw this movie yesterday afternoon, and I'm still trying to sort my feelings out. I can't really add much more to other reviews (best WWII movie yet made, Bruno Ganz's performance, several moments of silence by the audience after the movie ended). The semi-documentary style, accretion of detail (right down to the labels on the canned food) and sound of Russian mortars put me in an ever-circling, claustrophobic milieu of despair and violence that I would hope to never experience. Just from an American perspective, the feel of it and the movement of the action (lots of corridors) reminded me of a weird, but amazing mix of Das Boot and a satanic episode of The West Wing. I was sucked in immediately.
The fascination for me, though was in the behavior of all of the other characters - human rats in a sinking ship. Why would you stay? Why would you fight? How and where would you flee? Why would you keep such an obvious evil going even after the Fuehrer was gone? Why suicide? Russian retribution, or your conscience catching up with you?
Re: the criticism that Hitler was portrayed with some shreds of humanity. It reminds me a bit of the criticism that Milton got when he wrote Paradise Lost. We have to remember that Hitler was a human being, not Cthulhu with a mustache. Thinking of Hitler only as a monster doesn't help us recognize and defeat the next human monster who can do most unspeakable acts yet are kind to their staff and love their pets and spouses.
---- SPOILER ALERT ----
The ending didn't particularly work for me, not because it was relatively upbeat, but it seemed too pat and broke with the painstaking detail of the last 2.5 hrs. Sunshine is fine, but there is no way that two people would be traveling alone on a road out of Berlin.