A great anti-war film

Rating: 10/10 (25 October 2010)

I can't see anything controversial about Oliver Hirschbiegel's film Der Untergang (Downfall). Perhaps some find it so because it has deeply human underpinnings on which the entire story rests. We all know Hitler was a monstrous mediocrity as a politician and some, who knew him personally, claim he was a soft-spoken, cultured and intelligent man who became something else when he became Das Führer for public events. That last group is usually dismissed as unrepentant beasts and nothing they say holds any water with the popular media.
This film does not dismiss those who had not entirely unfavorable views of Adolf Hitler. I suppose that is what has enraged some people. If you can get passed the powerful emotional knee-jerk reaction to anything related to the man you will find a deeply moving story of the frailty and imperfection of our species. Hircshbiegel does not sugar-coat Hitler's manic personality but neither does he show a Hitler who goes insane and blows his brains out in a last-ditch panic. The methodical and precise aspect of Hitler's mind is on exhibit here and that alone is frightening. At one point he holds forth about the sin of compassion, to his way of thinking. Compassion only protects the weak and, like the apes, the human being must crush the weaker if the race is to survive. This is brutal stuff and unpleasant to hear let alone contemplate.
This film sheds a new light on the last days in the bunker in Berlin before the war ended. There are many powerful scenes that stick in the mind. This story is based upon the memories of Trudl Junge, Hitler's last secretary. You could possibly call this film Hitler from a feminine point of view but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. Young German women during the Third Reich who committed themselves to The Cause of National Socialism were clear- eyed and truthful, except perhaps with themselves. The real Trudl Junge admits at the end of the film, as an old lady, that she was wrong to not have known about the murders of millions of foreigners as she calls them and that youth was no excuse for Not Finding Out.
There is nothing neo-Nazi about this film. It isn't that kind of thing. Downfall is one of the greatest anti-war movies there is. The overwhelming tragedy that is any war hits with great force here. The personal events are harrowing. In the case of Magda Goebbels unbelievably and unbearably so as she must kill her six youngest children with her own hand, using a sleeping draft and then cyanide capsules. It is a unique and unforgettable sequence of scenes. Corinna Harouch (Magda Goebbels) turns in one of those quietly volcanic performances that are rarely scene in film.
Bruno Ganz plays Hitler as a second cousin to Nosferatu, his hands constantly twitching behind his hunched-over shoulders. I am no Hitler scholar but I've read a fair amount of literature on the era and about people loosely associated with the inner sanctum and I don't recall anyone mentioning this physical twitch of his. More than one person has mentioned that near the end Hitler was zonked on drugs most of the time. He is not shown as a morphine addict in this film but as a puritanical vegan who drank nothing but bottled water. There's food for thought.
Alexandra Maria Lara plays Trudl Junge and she is a magnetic personality who quietly carries the film on her lovely shoulders. Her story is told with elegance and subtly conveys the imperceptible vortex of apocalypse without the use of a blasting militaristic score or scene after scene of carnage, though there is a fair amount of that, but it is never gratuitous.
There are moments of utter rest and calm and beauty but they are few and far between. A very wonderful scene happens when Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler) takes Trudl and Gerda, another of Hiter's secretaries, out of the bunker during a lull in the artillery bombardment of Berlin. The three young women sit quietly on stone benches amidst newly blossoming bulbs in a courtyard above the bunker. A melodious bird sings idyllically in the trees and the sky is blue and the sun is shining. Normalcy. Then the sirens begin and the cigarettes are carefully stubbed out and the women retreat back underground, for the last time in Eva Braun's case.
The film is full of wonderful scenes and episodes and I found myself forgetting it was about Hitler at all. Perhaps that too is what enrages some people. We mustn't ever forget Hitler.
Well, how can we?
The cinematography, music, costumes, claustrophobic sets and the entire cast of fine German actors, beautifully but unobtrusively directed, is a fine work of art and should be seen by all film and 20th century European history buffs.