Yes, You *Should* See "Downfall"

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2005)

You may have reservations about seeing this movie.
Maybe, as some critics have implied, the movie "humanizes" Hitler and Nazis.
Maybe it would be creepy to watch a movie where most of the action takes place in an underground bunker.
Maybe you just don't want to go to a foreign language film.
Forget your reservations. You need to see this movie, on a big screen, with an audience. It is a masterpiece. I'd rank it with "Gone with the Wind," "Lawrence of Arabia," and "Saving Private Ryan." "Downfall" depicts events of world historical importance through the eyes of complex characters and it does so masterfully. "Downfall" raises important questions, and it also presents the viewer with a compelling visual epic.
Performances are first-rate. Costume design, the recreation of bombed-out Berlin, of air raids, are so realistic that you feel plunged into another world.
From the first scene, I was completely immersed in the world of "Downfall." I was moved; at times I cried. On screen characters make unintentionally funny comments, for example, about how they will negotiate with the Americans after the war. More than once, everyone in the theater where I saw the movie laughed out loud.
And, I raged.
I don't know when I've reacted so strongly to a movie. I'm sure you've seen the press conference where American military show film footage of the newly captured Saddam Hussein to Iraqi journalists. The Iraqis in the audience, seeing the film footage of Hussein, began to curse and shout and shake their fists at the screen. That's how I wanted to react to this movie.
Like most people interested in history, I've seen archival film footage of Hitler's speeches, and productions like "Triumph of the Will." That film footage did not prepare me for "Downfall"'s painstaking recreation of Nazism. There they are: Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Speer, and Hitler himself, chatting, eating, planning, going about their day-to-day activities.
Their painfully realistic images on screen filled me with rage.
Another reviewer here commented on her strong reaction to watching Magda Goebbels murdering her own children so that they don't have to live in a world without National Socialism. That viewer said she wanted to scream at the screen. I felt that way throughout the movie.
Are these Nazis human? Yes. Are they sympathetic? I'd be hard pressed to imagine a normal person feeling sympathy for these Nazis. They murder their own children. Hitler is plainly depicted as a twitching failure and a pathetic narcissist who sees even his beloved German people as mere pawns who exist solely to provide greater glory for him.
I can't help but compare "Downfall" to the "big" epic-wanna-be American movies of 2004, from "The Aviator" to "Alexander." There is just no comparison. Hollywood, watch out.
During, and certainly after, the movie my mind raced. Without being at all preachy, this movie invites you to -- no, demands that you -- think about the hero worship that surrounded Hitler. Why did a nation drop to its knees for this lunatic? Why, during Berlin's final hours, didn't more people read the writing on the wall? By extension, the film invites critique of any national psychosis and hero worship. Why did these people surrender themselves to Hitler? Is there any comparison between the events on the screen and contemporary life? In a brief coda, the real Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary, attempts to acquit herself by saying, paraphrase, "Gosh, I was a young, pretty girl, what did I know or care about politics?" But then she interrogates that stance. "I could have informed myself. I could have learned something. Being young is no excuse." I left the theater thinking not just about fifty years ago, but about today, about my country's involvement in Iraq, and America's largely passive response to that war.