 |
|
|
|
Downfall (2005)
 email this review to a friend
Movie Review by Jarrod 
June 30th, 2007
|  |
Downfall is one of the best war movies ever made. It represents an effort by a German director to portray Hitler in a way many might find troubling or offensive, and indeed the film has been criticized for being too sympathetic to the Fuhrer, which it is not, but it does show him as a human, capable of great cruelty and compassion. The claustrophobic atmosphere of his bunker, rather austere, surrounded by only his most devoted followers as the Russians advance towards Berlin, children recruited to defend the city in what is obviously a suicide mission. Hitler looks at maps and demands movements of divisions that no longer exist, except in his own delusional mind. He refuses to blame himself for Germany's defeat.
In reality, he blamed the Jews, and his generals, whom he claims would have not lost if they had followed his orders exactly as they had been dictated. His hand trembles behind him, a symptom of Parkinson's Disease. His soon-to-be wife Eva Braun slips outside for a smoke in between bombing raids, and dances to music as she pretends to be oblivious to the chaos outside. Germany lies in ruin. Hitler feels he has been betrayed by Himmler and Goering, leaving only Goebbels, his devilish propaganda minister. His wife, Magda, begs Hitler to leave, but he refuses. Magda murders her own children, issuing cyanide capsules to them as they sleep, rather than let them live in a world devoid of Nazism. Hitler commits suicide with a pistol, along with Eva, the day after they get married in a somber ceremony. His body is carried outside and burned.
Downfall examines Hitler's unstable psychological state in the last weeks of his life, credited to many things, including syphilis, but there is little doubt that even when he is completely nuts, he still commands dogged loyalty from his subordinates, who, even knowing the war is lost, play along with his illusions, unable to tell him the truth of what is happening. The performance of Bruno Ganz is the main attraction here, never has anyone played the dictator is such a raw or convincing manner. He gets everything right. The hand gestures. The screaming rants. The rough Austrian accent. Just the sheer physical look, down to the moustache and hairstyle. It is amazing. But the supporting cast is also very good. There is a gritty, superbly authentic visualization of 1945 Berlin and Hitler's bunker, the place he has chosen to make his last stand, against an enemy that had gotten the best of him. The movie is based on the memoirs of Traudl Junge, a young woman chosen by Hitler to be his secretary, and is there to witness it all, though she manages to escape, and also a book by German historian Joachim Fest, recounting Hitler's last days. To say Hitler was a remarkable and fascinating character is certainly true, and the movie shows his extraordinary magnetism, still very strong, though only a fraction of what it was in the 1930s, when he first took power.
His crimes, namely the Holocaust, while never discussed, are certainly well-known, and as we see this physically and emotionally crippled man, we realize that he is responsible for some of the most abominable atrocities in history, and wish that the Allies would have crushed his regime years earlier, along with his own demented dreams of ethnic supremacy over Europe if not the world.
Downfall does not make Hitler a caricature; it simply offers a sobering and unbiased portrait of him in his final days. As undoubtedly controversial as that may be, it also makes for an incredibly absorbing and compelling motion picture.
email this review to a friend
Comment on this Review:
Sorry, you must be a member to add comments to reviews.
Join or Login. |
 Subscribe to MatchFlick Movie Reviews through RSS
|
