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Monsterdämmerung

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Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Downfall," about the last days of Hitler and of the Third Reich, is an extraordinary work. It avoids every single possible pitfall to be "ordinary," to follow expectations, to present caricatures, to judge or preach or give in to any agenda. A great, flawless cast supports Hirschbiegel in his quest for truth and humanity in one of history's most inhuman chapters. (Commercial release of the film is expected next month.)

The exceptional stars of "Downfall" are Bruno Ganz as Hitler, and Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge, Hitler's last secretary, whose diary was used in producer Bernd Eichinger's brilliant script. Another standout in the huge cast is Corinna Harfouch, whose Magda Goebbels - and her businesslike killing of her beautiful children - will haunt you more than any great production of "Medea" has. Juliane Kohler does the impossible by playing a consistent, scatterbrain Barbie of Eva Braun, existing in a rather appealing fun world of her own, facing reality in just one moment - all the more stunning in context.

Ganz, whose portrayal of Hitler is so right and convincing that no one is likely to try to play the role again, attended the screening to receive the 10-year-old festival's first lifetime achievement award; he acknowledged the ovation with a shy and awkward "Thank you."

A big-screen war epic, a blood-curling but strangely intimate dance of death among men and women of various degrees of evil, not abstract monsters, "Downfall" also deals with issues of responsibility and morality, but in a way that such questions arise in real life - mostly peripherally and so easy to push away.

There was just a single instance of "taking sides" by the audience during this first US screening, and it came in a strange, confusing way (just like it would in "real life"). When Hitler orders not to spare the lives of Berlin civilians ("there are no civilians in this ultimate war"), Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) sneers: "It's not like someone imposed it on them - they gave us a mandate."

There was some scattered applause in the Castro, but the vast majority of the audience remained silent, not wanting to score points in support of something both obvious and the deeply, complexly meaningful.

Hirschbiegel (whose previous dozen films were promising enough, but not the extent of this landmark achievement) even manages to provide a small measure of catharsis at the end, engaging deep emotions after two and a half hours of a potentially deadening chronicle. At the very end, after briefly accounting for the post-war fate of each character, and giving statistics such as "50 million people died in the war," the real Traudl Junge - shortly before her death in 2002 - looks into the camera.

She begins by saying that she was very young when she went to work for Hitler and didn't realize the horrors taking place just outside the comfortable bunker - and you cannot help feeling instant, intense hatred - but then the old woman (whom we just managed to overlap in our minds with her young, vivacious self we watched until now) trails off, and says something else.

It was only recently, she says, that she saw a headstone for a woman in Berlin, who was born in the same year with Junge... and who died on the day she went to work for Hitler. "And when I saw that..." she says, with a look in her eye that reveals confusion, fear, knowing and not wanting to know - and the film ends. And you sit there.

Catharsis in not a solution or "elevation"; it is an overwhelming feeling, a mix of grief and something close to understanding. Catharsis doesn't excuse Oedipus or brings Lear back to life, it just makes you *feel* something, unlike the response to "50 million died in the war." "Downfall" does the impossible: it ends on a note of a small measure of catharsis, the miraculous finale to a great film

It's a amazing film

Customer Rating:
This is not just Brilliant film or one of the best film's around. It's a true classic and up there with the top contenders for the best movie of all time. Now being a german film it is in subtitles which might put off some people, but trust me it's worth it and being german, in german and acted by german's it add's to the feel and the story of the film. The other thingd that help make this a great film apart from being a true story, is it's well written script, brilliant acting, it's vived, compelling and gripping. I don't think I have to explain what the film is about, so I just say it's a brilliant film and one of the best war films of all time.

The best war movie ever

Customer Rating:
In my own opinion this is the best war ever made, Bruno Ganz made the roll of his life, amazing :)

A Realistic Depiction of Hitler's and NAZI Berlin's Last Days

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"Downfall" (Der Untergang) does what few war movies do: it depicts war not as merely a series of historical developments or an inexplicable "fog" of horrors, but as a complex interweaving of psychology, inhumanity, depravity, and ultimately the strength of the human will and hope. The underlying historical events are well known: Hitler, surrounded by the Red Army in his bunker in Berlin in the last weeks of April 1945, ultimately commits suicide by gunshot, just after having married his long-time companion Eva Braun, whom herself commits suicide by a cyanide capsule. As many know, the last days of Berlin were very bloody ones, with German civilians, German and Soviet soldiers suffering heavy casualties for very little yet very precious ground. Most sad of all, with much of the German Wermacht significantly killed, the NAZI apapratus began to recruit younger and younger "soldiers".

"Downfall" starkly and graphically depicts the suffering of Germany's civilians, who ultimately were the biggest victims of Hitler's inhumanity (both Jewish and non-Jewish alike). The NAZIs did not spare their evil even from their own family members, many of whom were unwillingly murdered before the Red Army captured Hitler's last refuge.

I have read some reviews that critize that "Downfall" depicts Hilter and the NAZI high apparatus as almost "human", and thus might elicit sympathy for the regime. While "Downfall" does depict some moments of seeming humanity (it was documented, for example, that Hitler could be kind to his secretaries and workers, and was very caring towards his German Shepherd "Blondi"), these punctuated moments of humanity do not take away from the ultimate complexity and human tragedy that defined Hitler. If anything, "Downfall" offers a very important lesson: Hitler, far from being some unimaginable monster, was all too human. And if Hitler was really human, then Hitler's own personal "downfall" is one that is not impossible to imagine in ourselves. The real take-home message is that we are all capable of evil, perhaps not of the same level as Hitler of course, but evil nonetheless.

Bruno Ganz does a remarkable job recreating not only Hitler's mannerisms and hand twitches (it is now suspected Hitler may have had early Parkinson's Disease), but also the inflections and intonations of his voice. While there is little recorded evidence depicting Hitler's voice outside of the infamous Munich rallies (where ultimately Hitler was yelling more than conversationally speaking), the one existing recording of Hitler speaking in a conversational voice is said to have been carefully studied by Ganz in preparation for his role. Ganz looks, sounds, and acts almost so convincingly that at times you almost feel you are witnessing Hitler himself.

The horrors of war ultimately cannot be "whitewashed". Some war movies paint the war in glorious, patriotic brush strokes (especially the war movies of the time). Others ridicule and dehmanize NAZIs to the point where they become almost caricatures. "Downfall" does neither: it depicts what most likely happened in Hitler's bunker those last ten days of April 1945. We see between moments of abject horror and despair short glimpses of humanity and hope, especially from the point of view of Hitler's secretaries, who were some of the few to survive. The extent to which individuals like these, farther extended from Hitler's inner circle, were complicit in his crimes is uncertain. But it is evident that to whatever extent they believed in the mythology of NAZIsm and Aryanism, it was devastatingly demolished in the last days of Hitler's Reich.

There are no heroes in "Downfall". And while the villains were always obvious, the real fact is that war leaves no one sinless. To show otherwise is to polemicize or romanticize, something that objective historical drama should not do, and which "Downfall" luckily does not do itself.

You are there at the Downfall...

Customer Rating:
Even though this film is German with English Subtitles, it portrays the event in a real and non-theatrical manner. One can imagine how the actual persons felt and what they did at the time. Bruno Ganz is outstanding in his portrayal of Hitler, representing him as a living person rather than a caricature as other actors have done. The entire cast is believable. The sets are believable. The film certainly deserves the accolades it has received.