What an achievement

Rating: 10/10 (8 September 2005)

Downfall is an extremely compelling movie. This is a realistic view of the last days of the Third Reich, set mostly in Hitler's bunker. When you are watching scenes in the bunker, you feel a sense of claustrophobia with the bombs coming down on Berlin. Bruno Ganz is excellent as Hitler. He sees Hitler in a delusional fanatic convinced that the war can still be won and he will personally lead them to victory. The fact that most of his troops are dead or captured and entire armies have been destroyed does not seem to faze him. Anyone who does not fight to the death is a traitor and a coward to him. If he goes down, he thinks the entire German people should go down with him. You see this in the movie with a scene of boys 12-14 years old manning artillery guns, blinded by their loyalty to him. The film does an excellent job in showing how even toward the end, many Germans were blindly loyal to Hitler. They do want to see Germany after the fall of the Third Reich. They would rather commit suicide and even kill their own children to spare them the fall of the Third Reich. See this compelling movie, even though it is in German.