Movie Review: 'Downfall' (Der Untergang)
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Because of my long-time interest in the topic of World War II, I have watched countless dramas, action-adventures, biopics and documentaries which focus on history's biggest and deadliest clash of arms.
Sometimes, of course, I watch World War II movies merely to be entertained; there are lots of movies set during the war that have no greater "mission" than to raise one's adrenaline levels (The Dirty Dozen, Von Ryan's Express) or get guffaws out of the audience (The Pigeon That Took Rome, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?).
Most of the time, however, I tend to seek some sort of enlightenment, understanding or inspiration - sometimes in purely fictional accounts of men in combat (Saving Private Ryan, Memphis Belle), and sometimes in "based on the true story" films that try, within the paradigm of commercial filmmaking, to recreate historical events that took place during the war.
Naturally, to get any understanding about the causes and consequences of World War II, it's important to try to watch movies that tell stories about the war, its battles and its personalities from different perspectives and different nationalities.
Obviously this means that every once in a while I will watch a movie made by filmmakers from one of our former enemies - say, like German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 Downfall (Der Untergang), a stark, gloomy semi-documentary depiction of Adolf Hitler's last days in his besieged capital, Berlin.
Downfall, which was written by Bernd Eichinger and based on books by Thomas Fest and Traudl Junge, stars Swiss-born Bruno Ganz as a prematurely-aged and very ill Hitler; graying, stooping and suffering from the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease and other maladies, the man who was once the master of most of Europe and unleashed his armies across thousands of miles now rules a rapidly shrinking Germany from a concrete-and-steel bunker buried beneath the rubble of the once-imposing Reich Chancellery.
The film begins with a short video excerpt from an interview with Frau Junge, who in 1943 became the Fuhrer's youngest secretary:
Traudl Junge: I've got the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this young and oblivious girl. Or that I'm not allowed to forgive her for not seeing the nature of that monster. That she didn't realize what she was doing. And mostly because I've gone so obliviously. Because I wasn't a fanatic Nazi. I could have said in Berlin, "No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to go the Fuhrer's headquarters." But I didn't do that. I was too curious. I didn't realize that fate would lead me somewhere I didn't want to be. But still, I find it hard to forgive myself.
The movie then segues to a brief prologue-like sequence, set in 1942, in which the then-Fraulein Traudl Humps (Alexandra Maria Lara) is interviewed for a position in Hitler's secretarial pool by the Austrian-born dictator himself.
Here, Ganz plays Hitler not as most people remember him - the fiery speechmaker with the wild gestures or the cold-blooded tyrant willing to sacrifice German lives to achieve his nefarious agenda - but rather as the polite, gentlemanly father-figure dubbed affectionately by his inner circle as "Der Chef" (the "Boss").
Once Traudl gets the job and celebrates with her co-applicants, Downfall flashes forward to April 20, 1945, the day known in the crumbling city of Berlin as Fuhrertag - Hitler's birthday.
For Hitler, his 56th birthday is definitely not a very festive occasion: the Western Allies have linked up with the advancing Soviet armies at the Elbe River and split Germany in two, and the Russians' final offensive - launched just four days before - has resulted in a tight encirclement of Berlin. There is still time for Hitler and his entourage to flee, perhaps to the Alpine regions where the Nazis could make a last stand, but the Fuhrer has decided that he will stay - and die - in his ruined capital.
The atmosphere around Hitler and the infamous bunker is, as you can well imagine, apocalyptic and surreal, while the moods and actions of his followers veers between the realism of those officers and officials who wish to surrender and the blind, self-delusional fanaticism exhibited by Hitler and many of his ardent apostles who believe that some last-minute miracle will occur and wrest victory out of the hands of the Allies and save the doomed Third Reich.
Throughout Downfall, we see how Hitler, his left hand shaking uncontrollably and his eyes fixed on maps depicting German units that exist only in the Fuhrer's imagination, shifts between bouts of lethal fatalism ("The war is lost... But if you think that I'll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I'd prefer to put a bullet in my head.") and unjustifiable optimism (while looking at his battle maps, Hitler often expresses his faith that the Ninth and Twelfth Armies will break the Soviet siege of Berlin and save the day).
If the viewer is shocked by Hitler's ability to convince everyone - even himself - that the Third Reich can somehow emerge victorious in the face of evidence that proves otherwise, he or she will be horrified by the total disregard the Fuhrer and some of his close advisers have for the welfare of the German people as the end of the war draws near.
In one scene, Hitler orders Armaments Minister Albert Speer (Heino Ferch) to destroy every single factory, railway line, seaport, electric plant and highway that can be used by the advancing Allies. When Speer asks what's going to happen to the German people if the country is hurled back into the Middle Ages as a result of Hitler's scorched-earth policies, the dictator basically tells him that all the "good" Germans died in the war anyway; anyone left alive has failed him and deserves to die.
Later on, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) echoes this nihilistic philosophy.
Joseph Goebbels: I feel no sympathy. I repeat, I feel no sympathy! The German people chose their fate. That may surprise some people. Don't fool yourself. We didn't force the German people. They gave us a mandate, and now their little throats are being cut!
Perhaps the most chilling sequence of Downfall - and there are plenty of chilling vignettes, believe me - is Magda Goebbels' (Corinna Harfouch) method of ensuring that her children don't have to suffer in a world devoid of the supposed blessings of National Socialism. In a Nazi version of the Medea story from Greek mythology, Magda condemns her kids to be "better dead than Red."
My Take: Although Hitler's last days have been portrayed in several theatrical and made-for-TV movies over the past 50 years, the ones most non-German viewers have seen have starred either American (Richard Basehart) or British (Anthony Hopkins, Alec Guinness) as the Fuhrer and have been mostly directed by non-German directors. Some of these are fairly accurate in the basics but tend to portray Hitler as a one-dimensional incarnation of evil.
This nationalistic way of depicting Hitler results in movies that tend to depict the Nazi leader mainly as a scene-chewing loon with no identifiable human traits whatsoever. Non-German actors tend to infuse their performances with their own biases about the man, sometimes without even being aware that they're doing so.
In Downfall, Bruno Ganz gives viewers a very nuanced portrayal of Hitler, a man who is kind to his Alsatian dog Blondi (until, of course, he needs to test the cyanide capsules Himmler has given him), women and children, then veering into angry rants in which he accuses his generals of being disloyal and incompetent.
Adolf Hitler: That was an order! Steiner's assault was an order! Who do you think you are to dare disobey an order I give? So this is what it has come to! The military has been lying to me. Everybody has been lying to me, even the SS! Our generals are just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards... Our generals are the scum of the German people! Not a shred of honour! They call themselves generals. Years at military academy just to learn how to hold a knife and fork! For years, the military has hindered my plans! They've put every kind of obstacle in my way! What I should have done... was liquidate all the high-ranking officers, as Stalin did!
Downfall tells the story of the fall of Berlin from various perspectives, so viewers sometimes get to witness vignettes showing how other individuals dealt with the "Twilight of the Gods"-like ending of Hitler's regime. Some, such as Hermann Fegelein (Thomas Kretschmann), Eva Braun's brother-in-law, know the end is near and want to bug out of Berlin before the Soviets capture the city, while his sister-in-law (Juliane Kohler) giddily stays behind in the bunker because she is - after many years of being Hitler's mistress - going to marry the Fuhrer.
Because Hitler is not exactly the kind of person any reasonable person wants to latch on to even while watching a movie, Traudl Junge serves as the audience's stand-in and observer. She is young, smart (if a bit naïve) and pretty, so she has all the attributes a character needs to hold one's hand (figuratively) and be a credible, even sympathetic guide to Hitler's Never-Never-Land as it collapses spectacularly.
This technique works most of the time, even though in some scenes it's hard to understand how the real Traudl Junge did not see that the man she called "der Chef" was a megalomaniacal mass murderer until the very end of their stay in the bunker.
Downfall is - like Das Boot - a film that can be claustrophobic at times. Most of it takes place in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery complex, and the sets there are just as confined and all-encompassing as the U-boat in Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 submarine epic.
But even in the rare scenes that take place outside, the environment of Berlin under Soviet assault is less than friendly. Artillery shells fall on the city like raindrops, and Soviet tanks and infantry assaults are as confining to Berliners as the North Atlantic was to the Das Boot boys in their Kriegsmarine sub.
Though Downfall is somewhat long at two hours and 35 minutes, it's worth watching at least once. It is about as accurate an account of Hitler's last days as a non-documentary film can be, and it tries hard to depict the Nazi leader and his followers not as supernatural demons but as human beings who allowed their racism, bigotry and desire to dominate Europe to drag them - and Germany - into an abyss of war, genocide and brutality.
Sometimes, of course, I watch World War II movies merely to be entertained; there are lots of movies set during the war that have no greater "mission" than to raise one's adrenaline levels (The Dirty Dozen, Von Ryan's Express) or get guffaws out of the audience (The Pigeon That Took Rome, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?).
Most of the time, however, I tend to seek some sort of enlightenment, understanding or inspiration - sometimes in purely fictional accounts of men in combat (Saving Private Ryan, Memphis Belle), and sometimes in "based on the true story" films that try, within the paradigm of commercial filmmaking, to recreate historical events that took place during the war.
Naturally, to get any understanding about the causes and consequences of World War II, it's important to try to watch movies that tell stories about the war, its battles and its personalities from different perspectives and different nationalities.
Obviously this means that every once in a while I will watch a movie made by filmmakers from one of our former enemies - say, like German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 Downfall (Der Untergang), a stark, gloomy semi-documentary depiction of Adolf Hitler's last days in his besieged capital, Berlin.
Downfall, which was written by Bernd Eichinger and based on books by Thomas Fest and Traudl Junge, stars Swiss-born Bruno Ganz as a prematurely-aged and very ill Hitler; graying, stooping and suffering from the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease and other maladies, the man who was once the master of most of Europe and unleashed his armies across thousands of miles now rules a rapidly shrinking Germany from a concrete-and-steel bunker buried beneath the rubble of the once-imposing Reich Chancellery.
The film begins with a short video excerpt from an interview with Frau Junge, who in 1943 became the Fuhrer's youngest secretary:
Traudl Junge: I've got the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this young and oblivious girl. Or that I'm not allowed to forgive her for not seeing the nature of that monster. That she didn't realize what she was doing. And mostly because I've gone so obliviously. Because I wasn't a fanatic Nazi. I could have said in Berlin, "No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to go the Fuhrer's headquarters." But I didn't do that. I was too curious. I didn't realize that fate would lead me somewhere I didn't want to be. But still, I find it hard to forgive myself.
The movie then segues to a brief prologue-like sequence, set in 1942, in which the then-Fraulein Traudl Humps (Alexandra Maria Lara) is interviewed for a position in Hitler's secretarial pool by the Austrian-born dictator himself.
Here, Ganz plays Hitler not as most people remember him - the fiery speechmaker with the wild gestures or the cold-blooded tyrant willing to sacrifice German lives to achieve his nefarious agenda - but rather as the polite, gentlemanly father-figure dubbed affectionately by his inner circle as "Der Chef" (the "Boss").
Once Traudl gets the job and celebrates with her co-applicants, Downfall flashes forward to April 20, 1945, the day known in the crumbling city of Berlin as Fuhrertag - Hitler's birthday.
For Hitler, his 56th birthday is definitely not a very festive occasion: the Western Allies have linked up with the advancing Soviet armies at the Elbe River and split Germany in two, and the Russians' final offensive - launched just four days before - has resulted in a tight encirclement of Berlin. There is still time for Hitler and his entourage to flee, perhaps to the Alpine regions where the Nazis could make a last stand, but the Fuhrer has decided that he will stay - and die - in his ruined capital.
The atmosphere around Hitler and the infamous bunker is, as you can well imagine, apocalyptic and surreal, while the moods and actions of his followers veers between the realism of those officers and officials who wish to surrender and the blind, self-delusional fanaticism exhibited by Hitler and many of his ardent apostles who believe that some last-minute miracle will occur and wrest victory out of the hands of the Allies and save the doomed Third Reich.
Throughout Downfall, we see how Hitler, his left hand shaking uncontrollably and his eyes fixed on maps depicting German units that exist only in the Fuhrer's imagination, shifts between bouts of lethal fatalism ("The war is lost... But if you think that I'll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I'd prefer to put a bullet in my head.") and unjustifiable optimism (while looking at his battle maps, Hitler often expresses his faith that the Ninth and Twelfth Armies will break the Soviet siege of Berlin and save the day).
If the viewer is shocked by Hitler's ability to convince everyone - even himself - that the Third Reich can somehow emerge victorious in the face of evidence that proves otherwise, he or she will be horrified by the total disregard the Fuhrer and some of his close advisers have for the welfare of the German people as the end of the war draws near.
In one scene, Hitler orders Armaments Minister Albert Speer (Heino Ferch) to destroy every single factory, railway line, seaport, electric plant and highway that can be used by the advancing Allies. When Speer asks what's going to happen to the German people if the country is hurled back into the Middle Ages as a result of Hitler's scorched-earth policies, the dictator basically tells him that all the "good" Germans died in the war anyway; anyone left alive has failed him and deserves to die.
Later on, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) echoes this nihilistic philosophy.
Joseph Goebbels: I feel no sympathy. I repeat, I feel no sympathy! The German people chose their fate. That may surprise some people. Don't fool yourself. We didn't force the German people. They gave us a mandate, and now their little throats are being cut!
Perhaps the most chilling sequence of Downfall - and there are plenty of chilling vignettes, believe me - is Magda Goebbels' (Corinna Harfouch) method of ensuring that her children don't have to suffer in a world devoid of the supposed blessings of National Socialism. In a Nazi version of the Medea story from Greek mythology, Magda condemns her kids to be "better dead than Red."
My Take: Although Hitler's last days have been portrayed in several theatrical and made-for-TV movies over the past 50 years, the ones most non-German viewers have seen have starred either American (Richard Basehart) or British (Anthony Hopkins, Alec Guinness) as the Fuhrer and have been mostly directed by non-German directors. Some of these are fairly accurate in the basics but tend to portray Hitler as a one-dimensional incarnation of evil.
This nationalistic way of depicting Hitler results in movies that tend to depict the Nazi leader mainly as a scene-chewing loon with no identifiable human traits whatsoever. Non-German actors tend to infuse their performances with their own biases about the man, sometimes without even being aware that they're doing so.
In Downfall, Bruno Ganz gives viewers a very nuanced portrayal of Hitler, a man who is kind to his Alsatian dog Blondi (until, of course, he needs to test the cyanide capsules Himmler has given him), women and children, then veering into angry rants in which he accuses his generals of being disloyal and incompetent.
Adolf Hitler: That was an order! Steiner's assault was an order! Who do you think you are to dare disobey an order I give? So this is what it has come to! The military has been lying to me. Everybody has been lying to me, even the SS! Our generals are just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards... Our generals are the scum of the German people! Not a shred of honour! They call themselves generals. Years at military academy just to learn how to hold a knife and fork! For years, the military has hindered my plans! They've put every kind of obstacle in my way! What I should have done... was liquidate all the high-ranking officers, as Stalin did!
Downfall tells the story of the fall of Berlin from various perspectives, so viewers sometimes get to witness vignettes showing how other individuals dealt with the "Twilight of the Gods"-like ending of Hitler's regime. Some, such as Hermann Fegelein (Thomas Kretschmann), Eva Braun's brother-in-law, know the end is near and want to bug out of Berlin before the Soviets capture the city, while his sister-in-law (Juliane Kohler) giddily stays behind in the bunker because she is - after many years of being Hitler's mistress - going to marry the Fuhrer.
Because Hitler is not exactly the kind of person any reasonable person wants to latch on to even while watching a movie, Traudl Junge serves as the audience's stand-in and observer. She is young, smart (if a bit naïve) and pretty, so she has all the attributes a character needs to hold one's hand (figuratively) and be a credible, even sympathetic guide to Hitler's Never-Never-Land as it collapses spectacularly.
This technique works most of the time, even though in some scenes it's hard to understand how the real Traudl Junge did not see that the man she called "der Chef" was a megalomaniacal mass murderer until the very end of their stay in the bunker.
Downfall is - like Das Boot - a film that can be claustrophobic at times. Most of it takes place in the bunker under the Reich Chancellery complex, and the sets there are just as confined and all-encompassing as the U-boat in Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 submarine epic.
But even in the rare scenes that take place outside, the environment of Berlin under Soviet assault is less than friendly. Artillery shells fall on the city like raindrops, and Soviet tanks and infantry assaults are as confining to Berliners as the North Atlantic was to the Das Boot boys in their Kriegsmarine sub.
Though Downfall is somewhat long at two hours and 35 minutes, it's worth watching at least once. It is about as accurate an account of Hitler's last days as a non-documentary film can be, and it tries hard to depict the Nazi leader and his followers not as supernatural demons but as human beings who allowed their racism, bigotry and desire to dominate Europe to drag them - and Germany - into an abyss of war, genocide and brutality.
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