A Not Horrible Enough Telling of a Horrible Story

Rating: 6/10 (8 October 2011)

This ensemble film about the last days of Hitler and his Nazi regime should have left me chilled and disturbed, but I found it oddly soft.
Bruno Ganz is terrific as Hitler, but he feels like a supporting character in his own drama. The film focuses on too many people, blunting the tautness and drama of what took place in that famed bunker during those dark days in April 1945. The movie feels overly scripted; there are too many scenes that smacked of a soap operatic melodrama. And it's too tasteful or cautious to confront the most horrific moments head on. I'm not one to advocate for gratuitous violence in films, but Steven Spielberg showed in "Schindler's List" that graphic violence is sometimes a necessity when telling a story as horrible as any of the numerous stories about what the Nazis did to the world.
The whole time I was watching this film, I wondered what it would have been like if it had been in the black and white, stark style of Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon." That movie, which I saw nearly a year ago, still haunts me, while "Downfall," which I saw a couple of weeks ago, I've already nearly forgotten.
Grade: B