Persuasive, visceral, shocking, and enlightening. And brilliantly made.

Rating: 10/10 (28 February 2010)

The Downfall (2004)
There is no way to find any movie-making fault here. The filming, the acting, the sets (if you can call such amazing scenes merely "sets"), and editing, and drama, the effects, etc etc are all as good as it gets. There no reason to even list all the great actors, from Bruno Ganz playing Hitler on down. It's so disturbing, convincing, and perfect (as much as movies can be) it'll shake you up, deeply, and properly.
Historically I can only assume it is accurate. It fits all the bits and pieces I've read about the last days of the Third Reich well, and it is a fully German effort, which gives it some kind of credence. Note, for a moment, that there are a lot of these redemptive, unapologetic, probing films by contemporary Germans, such as Sophie Scholl, and there are not similar movies made by the Japanese for their role in World War II. The implications of that I'm not sure, but it's worth pointing out at least to give huge thanks to the Germans involved for wanting to be honest, openly.
There will be a million ways of treating Hitler the person, including not treating him as a person at all. I think director Oliver Hirschbiegel (and his producers) make an astonishingly good effort to get it "accurate." It's not a documentary, and there are short scenes clearly meant to be moving beyond just information (like when Dr. Speer finds the patients in the basement of the hospital, or when the woman and the boy ride their bicycle down a woodsy road through golden sunlight). But why not? I don't think beauty is at fault here. The main narrative personality through the movie (the secretary) has at her core a sense of noticing what is true, and wanting what is right, and in the end she finds beauty by simply surviving.
But there is a way to analyze what happens here, but not quickly. There are moments that are gory, but there is no dwelling on violence (many suicides take place and we don't usually witness them directly). That alone makes the movie quite the opposite of Tarantino's version of Hitler's demise, for example, or even how Spielberg might show the blood, judging from Private Ryan. The Downfall makes the facts of Hitler's madness no caricature, but a real, frightening insanity, subtle enough to inspire followers. The willingness and the sometimes stupid sheeplike attitudes of the many officers around him is a huge part of the message here, assuming we can call the basic intention of the movie a drive for reassessing the facts of the times, and the implications about how power can be so wrong, and so persuasive.
Bottom line? An amazing movie.