9. Downfall (2004), dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel

[strange_complex]

IMDb page here. DVD given to me by mr_flay. Watched with Mum.

This is a very moving and powerful portrayal of the final few days in Hitler's bunker at the end of the Second World War, based chiefly on the memoirs of Traudl Junge, who was his private secretary at the time.

Its power rests mainly in its very straightforward telling of the story. There are no attempts to demonise any of the characters, or to draw explicit moralising judgements. Obviously, that would be ham-fisted and naive in the circumstances. Instead, all of the characters presented are extremely human, with all the complexity and contradiction that entails. And this makes the desperation of their situation, and the horror and futility of the lives being destroyed on all sides, ten times more devastating to watch, as well as making the horror of the things some of them are doing (like Magda Goebbels coldly and systematically murdering all six of her own children, because she did not want them to live in a world without National Socialism) far more immediate.

I was interested by a scene fairly early on in the film, in which Hitler presides over a model of a future Berlin which he has had built, talking about how what people really need are great monuments to inspire them, and how the Allied bombing will make it all the easier to put his new vision for the city in place. It reminded me very powerfully of the scenes in Quo Vadis in which Nero does much the same for Rome, including casting the fire of AD 64 in the same role as the bombs. This probably isn't coincidence, because Quo Vadis works quite hard at drawing links between Nero and Hitler, including for example scenes where Nero gives a straight-armed salute to troops marching by (and meanwhile, another 20th-century dictator is referenced by the fact that the actual model of Rome which Nero is crowing over in the film was originally built on the orders of Mussolini). What I don't know is whether the scene in Downfall is historically attested for Hitler, and was used for that reason as part of the characterisation of Nero in Quo Vadis, or whether things have come full circle, and portrayals of Nero are now being used to help characterise Hitler. I presume the former, since Downfall is clearly very well-researched - but either way, it was a very effective means of conveying the extent of Hitler's self-delusion at this time.

One thing did give me pause for thought when I hit Wikipedia after the film for information about the real Traudl Junge, though. As I said, the film presents itself as a historically-accurate account, and reinforces this by naming the two main books it was based on in the opening credits, and by framing the dramatisation between two short documentary clips of Traudl Junge herself talking to camera, filmed before her death in 2002. But its portrayal of her fate after she leaves the bunker deviates from the reality of her story. We see her walking safely through the lines of Russian troops who are occupying the city, and in fact being saved from the apparent lustful intentions of one of them by a young boy, who chooses that moment to take her hand and walk with her to safety. After that, the boy finds an abandoned bicycle, and the two of them sail off down sunlit country lanes to a new life. In reality, though, she and other female members of Hitler's staff were found in a cellar by Russian troops, and raped repeatedly before being kept as a prisoner of war for at least a year.

I can kind of see what the film-makers were doing here, in that they needed some way of demonstrating that the war was over, the world had changed, and Germany (represented in particular by the young boy) could now move forward into a better future. But I also felt that it did a disservice to the reality of Traudl Junge's experiences, undermined the impact of the rest of the events portrayed, and indeed fell into the trap of suggesting that once the Nasty Demon in the Bunker has fallen, everything will be all right. Since they'd done such a good job of avoiding that very simplistic line throughout the rest of the film, it was a bit disappointing to see it implied at the end.

Still, on the whole, an excellent film, which I would really recommend.

Comments

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

Downfall really is a mindblowing film - excellently researched with top notch acting. I admire the fact it neither sentimentalises or demonises Hitler - it shows him as someone complex, intelligent, and highly frustrated by the end. I do agree with you though that the ending is a little saccharine and not really needed. And as I haven't seen it for about a year, I need to do a rewatch!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought Bruno Ganz as Hitler was amazing. It must be a very difficult role to play without lapsing into stereotype, but I thought he really got across the human dimensions of the character.

[ingenious76.livejournal.com]

Another film you might like to try - assuming of course, you haven't seen it, so if you have please ignore this! - is Max, a fictionalised account of the relationship between Max Rotherman, a wealthy Jewish art expert, and a young Hitler, a struggling, penniless artist. Whilst the idea peddled is that Hitler was a failed artist, and therefore had to become a dictator is simplistic, it does show that Hitler was not born a monster, but became one. The detail given to the dying embers of the Weimar Republic in the film is superb - its worth watching for just the sets alone.