A rewarding experience!

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2005)

While I didn't see Downfall in theaters, I had heard the great word of mouth that it had received and quickly picked it up on DVD. The movie totally took me by surprise and not only amazed, but also shocked and, in an unanticipated turn of events, saddened me. It is something that I did not expect from a picture about the death of Adolf Hitler. Downfall tells the tragic tale of a madman, a person who, while still very human, is the ultimate victim of the sins that man, in his very nature, embodies.
The film is based on the memoirs of Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), who was Hitler's appointed secretary. The plot also uses Inside Hitler's Bunker by Joachim Fest in order to keep the plot as historically accurate as possible. Hitler (player to a T by the remarkable Bruno Ganz) is always the main focus of the movie, and even when he is not on camera his shadow on the events that happen on screen is always felt. Minor grave endeavors are shown throughout the movie and director Oliver Hirschbiegel does a good job of connecting them to the main problem  the Nazi Party. These happenings range from instances of violence on the streets, to a shocking scene in which a mother poisons her own children as instructed by the Fuhrer himself.
The most intriguing part of the film is not the realistic reproduction of a bombed city, or the amazing acting by all involved, although these things are startling and deserve awards. No, the best part is definitely the way Hitler is illustrated. During his last ten days, he didn't have control over anything, not the country, not the army, and not even the Nazi party itself. While the movie depicts those things really well, it goes even deeper and acknowledges that the Fuhrer couldn't even control himself. It was something not even he realized until those final moments in that dark bunker, where he shot himself.
The movie looks great thanks to the cinematography of Rainer Klausmann, with battle scenes and aftermaths colored in strikingly cheerless tones. Credit also has to go to director Hirschbiegel for the choices he made as far as what to film and where in the movie to put it. It is also to his credit, the way he directs the actors. Bruno Ganz practically embodies Hitler, portraying both his flaws, and few positive traits. All the actors around him, while turning in great performances are simply sidekicks, remarkably mirroring the roles their characters played in Hitler's real life.
So in this film you get not only an enormously accurate picture of World War II itself, but also an accurate portrait of the life of the most important and flawed man in arguably all of human history. Downfall is an endlessly rewarding motion picture and one of the best of the year. So if you don't mind the German language and having to read subtitles, you will be able to acknowledge the importance of Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, and its way of delving deep beneath the skin of its main character.