One of the best performances ever!

Rating: 10/10 (11 May 2005)

I absolutely love this movie. The audience is thrown into the final days of the war in Europe and is forced to accept a person who history has declared a monster and must realize that he was a human with all of those emotions. The writing, directing, and the acting especially by Bruno Ganz were incredible. Adolf Hitler was a human who not only made the appalling decisions that wiped out millions of people, but he also was a man who cared enough about his secretary to make sure she was out of Berlin to avoid Communist rule with the Soviets. In my opinion, "Downfall" is a must see movie for everyone and one of the best movies of all time as well as probably the best acting performance of all time.
The story is about the final days of Adolf Hitler in his bunker as the Soviet Army is encircling what is left of the city of Berlin. It is shown through the eyes of one of Hitler's personal secretaries, Traudl Junge, played by Alexandra Maria Lara (TV-Doctor Zhivago,) who is completely loyal to Hitler. Junge is staying loyal even though Hitler's closet allies are abandoning him. Hitler, played masterfully by Bruno Ganz (The Manchurian Candidate,) is almost bi-polar in the final days. One moment, he is the historical monster the audience as grown to know as we watch he tell his generals that there are large German armies outside of Berlin who are going to rescue him, then screaming at them when they don't. Then you see a Hitler that is concerned about his friends and the people who have worked for him, telling people to leave Berlin because the war is lost. I am not aware of another movie that has shown that kind of a Hitler. After Hitler commits suicide, the rest of the story focuses on Joseph Goebbels short command of Germany, the murder or his own children, his death, and Junge's escape out of Berlin. Quite possibly the greatest performance by an actor, Bruno Ganz delivers us an Adolf Hitler that society is not ready to embrace. Ganz acting decisions to show us a human Hitler with emotions of kindness, compassion, and love, is completely different than the Hitler history has showed us. There are two scenes that show the greatness of his performance. The first scene is when Hitler is being told by the his architect, Albert Speer, that he had not obeyed Hitler's orders for quite sometime even though his personal loyalty never wavered. Hitler was furious but all he did was break his pencil, refused to shake his hand, and shed a tear. To show a monster with emotions is a powerful statement, especially the emotion of sadness, not just betrayal. Another scene that was powerful to me was when Junge walked into Hitler's room and he was sitting there with very little light looking at a painting of Otto Von Bismarck. The scene was almost spiritual in that he was sitting there and looking for answers in a calm and still fashion. It is Impossible to imagine the Hitler in history books that was this peaceful, but that is exactly how he was portrayed, at peace. Ganz makes many risks on this character and succeeds on ever one. Not since George C. Scott's portrayal of Patton have I seen an actor become the character he was portraying, Bruno Ganz was Adolf Hitler.
Director Oliver Hirschbiegel did not make a wrong choice. While inside the bunker, you felt Closter phobic and never safe from the artillery shells bouncing of the ground, outside you weren't safe and you knew that the longer you stayed outside, the sooner you would become causality. His action scenes were intense, say a step below Saving Private Ryan. Two great scenes that he shot involved the young children defending the city. At the beginning of the film the children were receiving medals from Hitler for their bravery. When the kids were manning an AA gun, a parent came up and told them to leave because they would die, and they would have none of it. They were prepared to die for Hitler. Towards the end of the movie when the defenses were failing one of he children, a young girl, asked another older kid to kill her, and he did. He then turned the gun on himself. This scene was done without words and was again very intense and outstanding. I could go on and on and get into some of the political philosophies of this movie and what they mean but I wont. This is an amazing movie and IF you can handle the fact that by the end of the movie, you may question your beliefs of what Hitler was, a man not a monster, then you should watch this movie, if you can't then stay away. Because this movie gives a convincing argument that not all evil men are heartless monsters, but human beings with a belief that what they are doing is right. *This review and others can be seen at www.bbmc.dockratent.com*