Huge effort from the German people

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2006)

'Der Untergang' is not a movie like any another. It is a great film, but it however is even more than just carefully crafted historical epic. It is also Germany's brave step to face her past that has for so long been referred to with phrases like "Nazism" and "the Holocaust". Nobody but Germans could have done "Der Untergang" and it makes the outcome quite an extraordinary experience to watch. It's not just a war film, it's a milestone in the mind of the German people.
'Der Untergang' is nothing like an easy movie to watch and it does not even tell you a new story. It only let's you to see the faces of those people who the world has condemned to hold the spectre of absolute, or at least partially absolute evil. You may think that as a rather inconvenient thing as well: you have to watch psychotic Nazis for quite a long time. You'll see detailed scenes how they will all meet their destiny and how far the reality is from these people's minds. You will realise how the evil leaders mislead their weak subjects and even if the situation is hopeless they will die because the thing they believed in is gone. It is all about commitment for things later generations have doomed, but the movie will ask "what you would have done if you had lived in Berlin during year 1945?".
You might not necessarily like what you see, you'll realise that almost anyone of us could have been there and you can almost see yourself in the film. That is why 'Der Untergang' makes you to watch it to the very end while you think the question about yourself and history.