**** (out of ****)
Starring Bruno Ganz
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel & written by Bernd Eichinger, from the books by Joachim Fest, Traudl Junge, and Melissa Muller
2004
155 min R
Did Hitler have a funeral? Did only maniacs show up, or were there real people? When they tried to think of nice things to say, what did they come up with? Was he an advocate of good penmanship? Was his personal hygiene above reproach? Were the words “bathed daily” to be put on his headstone where most people write “loving father?”
Bruno Ganz gives an incredible performance as no less than Adolf Hitler, which is an interesting change of pace, to say the least, considering he played an angel in 1988’s “Wings of Desire.” Chronicling the last days of Hitler and the Nazis, all trapped in a bunker, the amazing thing is that Ganz’s Fuhrer begins the movie kind of, well, sympathetic. He’s a sad little man, distraught, failed, everyone has turned against him, and his rages seem almost childlike.
But then in the second half, as the ranting and raving brings us back to who this man really was, we come to see why we are better than he was: we are able to feel pity and compassion for him, evil as he was, even though he, near the end, was utterly unable to feel any sympathy for the German people he thinks have “failed” him. (His vicious mentioning of the Jews provokes exactly the kind of response it should have: what do they have to do with anything?) It may seem odd to feel pity for the 20th century’s worst monster, but if we cannot see him as a human being, than are we any better than he was, except as a difference of degree?
What also comes across is the amazing calm of all these Nazis. With a few exceptions—Eva Braun is like a mad, Teutonic Julie Delpy, and Goebbels has some craaaazy eyes—we are seeing otherwise sane men and women in the final stages of how they were swept along, incrementally, by this diminutive madman. Mrs. Goebbels is nothing if not calm and calculating as she dopes to death her demonic little Von Trappe offspring. The movie becomes a fascinating study of how, even at the end, we are social creatures. These generals and soldiers who know they are doomed refuse to make a mass abandonment of their Fuhrer. We often hear how soldiers fight not for politics or causes or tactics, but to protect the men next to them. But here is the downside: no one believes Germany will regroup, but everyone would rather die than go against the pack.
And do they ever die, so many headshots and poison pills. Battle scenes are quick and brutal, as Russians fire from all sides and the last desperate German soldiers—many of them children and old men—scurry about. Weary Russian fatalism and resignation proves better than zealous German industriousness; somehow that’s very comforting to me. Visually, “Downfall” is pale men in gray uniforms moving about gray tunnels. We can’t always tell one general from another, but what matters is that there seem to be fewer and fewer of them each time Hitler calls a meeting. “Downfall” is also packed with about as many uncomfortable laughs as Adam Sandler’s “Punch Drunk Love,” as Nazis stamp out that last cigarette before putting bullets in their brains. It’s a great movie, even if it’s not exactly what you’d call fun.
Finished Saturday, November 26th, 2005
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