The best World War 2 epic ever?

Rating: 10/10 (28 March 2005)

Let me echo others in saying I know no greater film about World War 2. DOWNFALL is so brilliantly conceived, so perfectly written and acted, and so uncompromisingly probing and honest, it makes SAVING PRIVATE RYAN look adolescent by comparison.
It's miraculous how DOWNFALL avoids the easy answers and typical agendas one finds in books and films about this period, opting to show all sides of one of history's most dramatic and troubling episodes. The bloodiest war in human history is grinding to a close, and YOU ARE THERE. Modern parallels abound ... something very much like this probably happened in Iraq, as Saddam held on till the bitter end.
The film's use of violence is truly commendable -- there is exactly enough to grip and shock us, where appropriate, but never the gratuitous gore-for-its-own sake that one finds even in Spielberg's battle scenes.
DOWNFALL recalls Woodrow Wilson's reaction to Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION: "it's like writing history with lightning." The writing and the acting, especially Bruno Ganz's towering, fully-dimensional portrait of Hitler, should win every award there is. Previous film Hitlers have been paper tigers, melodramatic villains, but Ganz gives us a complex, living, breathing human being -- which makes him all the more frightening.
Bravo to everyone who had a hand in producing this masterpiece!