As brutally authentic as a film gets: there is no entertainment to be found here.

Rating: 10/10 (6 February 2006)

As Downfall begins, World War Two and Berlin are already hopelessly lost, but yet Hitler issues orders to imaginary armies, and his cadre of generals never does more than tactfully disagree as millions of civilian lives are deliberately jeopardised to no meaningful end. Downfall shines a hard light into Berlin's bunkers, and illuminates a politics both repugnant, and scary in its proximity to politics we know.
The film follows one of Hitler's secretaries, a high-ranking army doctor, Goebbel's wife, a twelve-year old panzer killer, a general encouraging withdrawal from Berlin, and the general defending it. Their stories play out in Berlin's command bunker and through what is left of its streets and buildings. When all of their doings and meetings are put together, one arrives at a rich picture of Berlin's lasts gasps.
We see snatches of the ordinary Berliner's war, of the embattled soldier's war, but mostly we look in upon the actions of Hitler's officers, companions, and civilian attachés. We see them execute erratic orders; variously urge or resist a withdrawal from Berlin; prepare to slip away themselves; write last testaments; sit listless; whore; drink and carouse; labour with the wounded; or prepare for their suicide, and perhaps the murder of their family. What emerges is a compelling interrogation of fanaticism.
The mind boggles at the naïvety of some of the film's acquaintances, but is most disturbed by the actions of its officer class, who know Hitler's behaviour to be entirely irrational yet observe his orders all the same. Many of his generals value their duty to a madman resolved upon death above the lives of millions; the overwhelming concern of others is self-preservation. Why was their no coup in these last days? That is the question which this film will have your mind screaming.
Downfall feels like a fly-on-the-wall documentary, the shots are too well composed and the crew too invisible, but it feels that authentic. The dull grey-green film stock familiar from Saving Private Ryan et. al. helps, but it is the film's remarkable performances, production design, and effects, which really carry the day.
In appearance the film is every bit as convincing as Private Ryan, but it is made still more verisimilar by the absence of any sentimental narrative concessions. Downfall doggedly, dispassionately shows the callousness of the war and its key prosecutors. In the bunker one encounters a menagerie of moralities just as distorted as Hitler's. A few of Downfall's scenes are of the most disturbing nature.
Hitler is not amongst the characters that the camera loosely follows through the film. His centrality to the action probably wins him the most screen time, but our experience of him includes waiting in anterooms and peering down corridors. Thus, cunningly, the power relations around him are revealed; and we get to listen in to both back room and front room politics.
Bruno Ganz's performance is excellent; his Hitler is delusional, tyrannical, and monumentally immoral, but still he conjures some of the charisma and personal kindness that must have seduced those around him. Incredibly, when released in Oz, film critics talked about Downfall's sympathetic portrayal of Hitler: they must have been watching a different film! Ganz is truly repellent; to take his character further would only make it a caricature. His moments of humanity, and his tired physique, only make the whole man more terrible. His portrayal rings true because we can perceive something of how he came to power.
Juliane Köhler also makes a powerful impression as a flighty, selfish, unhinged Eva Braun. You might just hate fanatical ice woman Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch) more than her husband before the film's end. But her fanaticism is no more amazing than the determined naivety of secretary Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara); a snippet of the real person talking in interview caps the film. What she says is what most German war survivors now say about their culpability; however, after what you've just seen, one's disbelief at such systematic ignorance is more acute than ever.
Downfall is flawlessly executed; the feelings it elicits are intense. It is well deserving of a ten, but one would never call this film entertainment.