Gripping Docudrama

Rating: 8/10 (21 March 2005)

"Downfall (Der Untergang)" is a gripping docudrama that brings the History Channel to life, though I missed the contextual-providing talking heads and pop-up explanations, especially to know if there was anything new or revisionist in this German view of Hitler's last days in his bunker with his inner circle.
As I am not a regular devotee of military channels, I frequently got confused and misplaced among the ensemble, such that I really needed the closing snapshots to tell me who was whom and what happened to them after the film ends at surrender (documenting that suicide preempted many from being Nuremberg defendants). While I thought these might have been tenacious yes men, my husband does watch those programs and he explained that these advisers were with Hitler from the beginning, unlike Stalinist purges.
My husband also pointed out that some of Hitler's rants, chillingly portrayed by a dynamic Bruno Ganz, are not just paranoid ravings but accurately reflect his clashes with the upper class Prussian career military men who were naysayers to his pre-Stalingrad military successes, whereas his perceptions of the final military situation were quite delusional, especially once the top brass were afraid to tell him the truth.
Evidently, what are new are the quotidian insights of life in the increasingly bizarre bunker provided by Hitler's secretary, which were revealed before she died in a book and interview documentary "Blind Spot (Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin", an edited version of which was shown on U.S. TV; my husband objected that even she didn't witness some of the scenes that are particularly tense so some poetic license is probably taken. While it is these personal touches that some have complained make Hitler human, I found it more interesting to learn about the inner circle, as he obviously couldn't conduct his reign of terror alone.
The film distinguishes among a spectrum of Nazi ideologues and fellow travelers at all levels-- the most fanatic are shown here as strident caricatures, particularly a scary Frau Goebbels who makes Livia Soprano look like fun and games, career soldiers, patriots and civilians, including child recruits, while Eva Braun is shown to be naive to the point of lunacy.
Like "Rosenstrasse," another contemporary German director's take on the period, director Oliver Hirschbiegel is determined not only to go beyond the old ignorance disclaimers to show the impact of World War II on ordinary Berliners as Hitler dismisses their plight (including, disconcertingly, a symbolically blond, blue-eyed boy whose travails outside the bunker we tensely follow throughout the film) and his loyalists throughout the ranks continue revenge until the last moments, though his insistence that there are no longer any civilians in this war could also apply to the London Blitz he fomented or the Allies' firebombing of Dresden. Just as the film seems to identify many reasonable Germans, including some at high levels, disgusted with war and the Nazis, both Hitler and Goebbals point out that they have been in power for decades with the acquiescence of the German people.
While the script also carefully includes Hitler's paranoid anti-Semitism as part of his rabid philosophy until the end, the documentary coda about the facts of the Holocaust seem tacked on to assure audiences that the genocidal aspect of the Third Reich is not being ignored amidst choices of tactics, strategy, personality and loyalty.
It's amazing that a docudrama whose outcome we already know can be so taut and riveting, such that you come out of the theater drained.