WWII from the Nazi perspective: A tough task and even tougher experience, but profound and necessary

Rating: 9/10 (14 January 2017)

Not just any World War II film or dramatization of Nazis, "Downfall" gets up close and personal with the Third Reich and its key members, recounting Adolf Hitler's final days in a Berlin bunker as Soviet troops besieged the city.
No one has had to play Hitler in quite the way "Downfall" requires of Bruno Ganz. This is not a good vs. evil, Axis and Allies WWII epic that reminds us all of the wickedness of Nazism and the great tragedy of the Holocaust. Screenwriter Bernd Eichinger wants to — with as much historical accuracy as possible — explore the Fuhrer behind the facade, the megalomaniacal idealist as he's confronted with his inevitable failure. With Oliver Hirschbiegel's stark direction and Ganz's multi-faceted performance, "Downfall" strips away the legend of Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis and provides a grim, pitiful portrait of a movement's dying breaths.
In addition to a book compiled by historian Joachim Fest, the story comes from the accounts of Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary from 1942 through his death, who survived following the Nazis' surrender. Hirschbiegel actually bookends the film with testimonial footage of the real Junge reflecting on being young and naive, and how she played ignorant and absolved herself of any guilt at the time and now has trouble forgiving herself.
Junge's character (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) is the closest thing the film has to a protagonist, yet the film isn't presented entirely from her perspective. The story features an extensive list of characters, from notable names like Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) and Himmler (Ulrich Noethen) to an array of military officers, doctors, children and volunteer fighters and more. It actually starts to get extremely confusing, but Eichinger was clearly determined not to exclude any one person or type of person, and the payoff comes in the form of the various ways these many characters responded to knowing the end was coming, which presents us with an array of fascinating psychological case studies.
Most fascinating of them all, of course is Hitler, who the film depicts as making careful preparations for his suicide knowing it was only a matter of time, but who refused to surrender and continued to bark military orders as if confident that a the final victory was still achievable. Ganz's performance has hints of the fiery orator most people are familiar with, but also a sensitivity and a sadness as he realizes just how many of his people have betrayed him by giving up and that was his failure. That's not to say Ganz or "Downfall" humanize Hitler to the extent that we actually feel sorry for him, but even those who believe so ardently in an evil ideology must confront failures, their legacy and death.
Hitler also knew he had lost, and the film portrays him of being at peace with it, so what's more chilling is the way others respond, those who were naive, those who went along with Nazism out of cowardice, and those who became so swept up in Nazi dogma that they couldn't toss it away in the face of objective truth and logic. Maybe more fascinating than Hitler's perspective is that of the prominent Nazi women in the film, Hitler's longtime partner Eva Braun (Juliane Kohler) and Maegda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch). Both women remain loyal in spite of their fate, but handle the waning moments different. Maegda's decision to bring her six children into the bunker, for one, has a particularly harrowing effect on the film.
"Downfall" doesn't have the cinematic qualities of most WWII films. In fact, it might be better suited as a play with its limited set and variety of scenes featuring conversations between a host of different characters. The constant shelling of Berlin throughout the entire film provides ample context for the drama underground that the story doesn't need most of the outdoor "action" sequences.
That said, Hirschbiegel does not glorify war or violence; his film portrays both rather matter-of-factly. In fact, he's a little inconsistent in how he uses blood and gore — the amount of it varies from scene to scene, but the amount of death in the film is staggering and a profound component of the experience of the film. "Downfall" kind of presents everything at face value, a rather critical decision considering the highly sensitive nature of the story and its characters.
Every WWII film, especially one about Nazism and the Holocaust, must have a niche and unique perspective considering how often filmmakers dip into its well of stories. Yet they do it because humanity will never quite understand how the Nazis were able to take power and how the Holocaust was allowed to happen. "Downfall," as difficult a viewing experience as it is, unquestionably fills in one part of the picture of one of history's darkest chapters, a section that could've easily gone unpainted.
~Steven C
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