The fall and decline of the Third Reich

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2005)

The whole story of Hitler's downfall is told through the eyes of his former secretary Traudl Junge. It starts with her selection, and while another woman born and raised in Berlin is dismissed in an instant, she is chosen because of her Bavarian background (Hitler was born in Austria, not far from Bavaria). She died in 2002 and in the documentary I'm toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin / Blind Spot - Hitler's Secretary she is interviewed and the script of Der Untergang / Downfall is also based on that interview. The problem I have with her is that I just can not believe her naivety. Yes, she admits in the end of Der Untergang (taken from that documentary) that she should have known better. But I personally still believe that she knew better but went along and this movie and the documentary suggest there are some people defending or at least believing her.
This is the most expensive German production ever made and it shows. Especially the sound and sound editing works impressive as we have the bombing and fighting always going on in the foreground or background. Every time a person considers the bunker as an ordinary place to live, a sound (loud or soft) can be heard. The confined space within the bunker is also what makes this work with the opportunity to make shots of the long central hall where a lot of drama can be viewed with a distant camera-eye. By letting the viewer spend such amount of time in the bunker the restrictions and drama becomes only clearer. The war outside is used to create the contrast with the relative tranquility within and to show the difference between the suffering of the people and the madman inside that never once cared for them in the end. But the action outside is too sketchy, most characters are anonymous so it makes it hard to identify with any of them. This isn't on the level of Saving Private Ryan, by now the standard for war movies.
With Hirschbiegel's background as TV-man this is a well made documentary dressed as fiction, but that alone does not make cinema. There are a couple of scenes that reach that level: Speer shown in the end in front of one of his own neo-classical buildings, a boy walks from a battle scene and we hear gunfire only to find out seconds later it is the typewriter of the secretary, the readings of the letters of the females intertwined with the suicidal deaths of a male and female SS-soldier.
The fall of empires never comes unexpectedly, and although such regimes do not disappear in an instant, they ultimately dissolve in a few days. As the end nears, Hitler is shown increasingly as an idiot losing all sense for reality and giving random orders, appointments, and still decorating soldiers. The only thing important to him is dog-like loyalty. From his loyal followers we see a range of reactions: From the true believer Goebbels, sacrificing his whole family and his own forces, to the pragmatic Himmler, the loyal (but not to every price) Speer and the human Schenck.
Hitler did what the Germans demanded from him. He was a simple man with a humble background and limited capabilities who luckily failed in what he tried to accomplish. He saw Stalin as more ruthless, which to an extent is historically true, although their atrocities are of the same proportions.
This movie stays close to the known facts, and is therefore interesting as a history lesson. But for those familiar with all facts this is only an annotation, and for those not familiar it lacks a proper introduction in all the characters. Unfortunately it may send the wrong message: showing Hitler (perfectly acted by Bruno Ganz) as just a human being (soft spoken, animal lover and a vegetarian, all true by the way) it may be an attractive document for neo-Nazis too. So, to what end was this made, because there could be a somewhat stronger message like Hirschbiegel's Das Experiment has.