grimly fascinating film

Rating: 8/10 (24 July 2006)

Ever since his death in a Berlin bunker at the end of World War II, there has been endless speculation and conjecture surrounding the final days of Adolph Hitler and his long time mistress Eva Braun. A few years back, a documentary entitled "Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary" interviewed one of the few people who claimed to be an eyewitness to those events, a young woman hired to take dictation for Der Fuehrer for the last two and a half years of his life. "Downfall" is a dramatized account of what she saw.
Indeed, this new film begins and ends with clips from that earlier work, in which a now aged Traudl Junge attempts to explain why she allowed herself to become a devotee of both Hitler and the Nazi party (she chalks it up, basically, to "curiosity"). After that brief preamble, "Downfall" plunges us immediately into that hellish time when the world lay in ruins and The Third Reich was breathing its long overdue final gasp.
The beauty of "Downfall" is not merely that it affords us a glimpse into one of the most fascinating bits of 20th Century history, but that it opens up aspects of human nature that we may not always wish to acknowledge. It shows Hitler as a man accustomed to being able to control events and the people around him suddenly rendered impotent in the face of a force - in this case the Russian army battering away at Germany's capital city - greater than himself. As events spiral more and more out of control, the dictator becomes ever more paranoid and divorced from reality (by the end he's issuing orders to an army that , quite literally, no longer exists). For him, the world suddenly divides itself up into those who will remain loyal and faithful to the bitter end and those who will become traitors both to him and to the "glorious cause" that defined their lives for so many years. For one thing the movie is clear to acknowledge is that, even in his final moments, Hitler remains unrepentant and convinced that not only was he right in what he did, but that future generations would come to recognize that rightness and honor him for it. In many ways, this is the story of any failed dictator whose dreams of worldwide domination end in the smoldering ruins of his own hubris.
But it is not merely Hitler who exhibits bizarre behavior in the face of onrushing doom. Even though most of the people who have chosen to remain in the bunker with their leader are fully aware of the fate that awaits them, they maintain many of the rituals and accoutrements of "civilized," "gracious" living: they hold dances, sing patriotic songs, drink champagne from crystal glasses, read magazines, all the while calmly discussing the ideal way to kill themselves. Despite their fear, they are so caught up in the vision and the man to whom they have sworn allegiance that they are willing to die - and take their children with them into death - rather than live in a world without their beloved Fuehrer.
The makers of "Downfall" run the risk common to any work that attempts to provide a three-dimensional portrait of Hitler: the accusation that they are trying to "humanize" a man whose epic disregard for human life puts him in the category of the greatest monsters who ever lived. And, indeed, the movie does show Hitler displaying moments of warmth and tenderness, mainly aimed towards the women in his life (and, of course, his dog). Yet, who among us really believes that Hitler NEVER showed affection to those who were close to him? It was the fact that he COULD treat the people he loved in this way yet was unable to extend that same sense of empathy and concern to the faceless, nameless millions he slaughtered that made him the true incarnation of evil on earth.
The film also does a great job showing the varied reaction of Hitler's military commanders as they argue back and forth over whether to level with him about the hopelessness of the situation and thereby risk incurring his wrath or to continue to feed his delusions and let him go out thinking he was still master of his fate.
The performances are all first rate, but I would like to single out especially the lively and vivacious Juliane Kohler who manages to make Eva Braun's blind devotion to a murderous madman and fearlessness in the face of death touching, understandable, and - dare I say it? - strangely heroic. As Junge, Alexandra Maria Lara shrewdly portrays a woman whose own devotion to the man and the cause is tempered by a certain degree of rationality and fear, to the point where she can ask, in a moment of candor, how Hitler can be so kind on a personal level, yet so brutal in his comments and actions. And, of course, Bruno Ganz gives a bravura performance as Hitler, running the gamut from full-throttle mania to tender solicitude while never losing sight of the man at the core.
Despite being set in the past, "Downfall" has a great deal of relevance to our own time. To see Magda Goebbels methodically and systematically poisoning each one of her own children before having herself killed is to understand a little better how family men can fly planes filled with innocent men, women and children into skyscrapers. It's a scary and sobering sight indeed. Now if only we as a species could learn some of the lessons put forth by this film.