Movie Review: "Downfall (Der Untergang)"

This movie depicts in detail the last days of Hitler and his associates in the bunker in Berlin, as well as some events outside the bunker (the fall of Berlin.) I should preface this by saying that I have an active interest in the history of World War II. This is not a documentary, but a reenactment with actors, and all in German with subtitles(except a bit of Russian near the end.) The screenplay was based on a historical text by Joachim Fest and first-person accounts by Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal secretary from 1942 until the end, and a young boy who fought the Russians in the streets as part of the Hitler youth. I found the film gripping and fascinating throughout. Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler is incredible. And the woman playing Magda Goebbels is frightening.

I hope I am not overly fascinated with the subject, but I found the continued fantasy on the part of Hitler and Eva Braun weirdly mesmerizing. She keeps trying to throw parties and get people to dance, and she’s all giddy. (Basically, she’s off her nut.) When a command post for an army regiment was overtaken by the Russians, Hitler threatened to have the commander shot for "moving the command post" toward the Russian lines. He was ordering companies to attack who were completely encircled, or had 80% casualties, or little to no ammunition. And the most shocking revelation to me, and one they really drove home, was that he coldly sacrificed the people of Berlin--he directly caused thousands of people to die needlessly by not surrendering. He said the German people had proved themselves weak so they had to die, they betrayed him; he was totally unsympathetic to them. Totally inhuman (why would anyone be surprised? but it was shocking to me just the same.) But the movie was interesting in that at moments it portrayed him in a sympathetic light, warmly concerned for his secretaries or for his dog.

As Hitler continues to deny the inevitable, hemmed in by a roomful of sweating commanders simultaneously hating him (he castigated them as traitors and cowards whenever they even hinted at the truth of the situation,) horrified by his actions, and scared to death by him, I kept thinking: TWO assassination plots involving the high-up military brass have already failed. They must have been going nuts.

So, I recommend the movie, but I would warn the potential viewer that it is pretty violent—it is a war movie, and depicts a group of desperate people at the tail end of a grand, horrible, violent dream. There were some depictions of amputation that I had to look away from, and there are several suicides.

According to my sister, the movie has been criticized in Germany both for being too sympathetic to Hitler and for being too damning of Hitler. MSH was lukewarm. He thought it was too long. He said "Hitler was fucked up, and the people who were fanatical about him were fucked up, and they could have told us that in an hour and a half." So it brings up an interesting point about historical films. I think it was an excellent film, and an excellent historical film, because it seemed (and my reading seems to back this up) that great pains were taken to keep everything authentic down to the details. I admit my judgment is clouded because I am very interested in the history. But is the presentation of historical events beyond a dispassionate recitation of the facts useful or ethical? In other words, could someone who IS really unjustly fascinated with Hitler for all the WRONG reasons use this to fuel his fire? “Should” the movie have been made in other words, and made 2 hours 45 minutes long—does it glorify more than educate and warn?