Film Review: Downfall (15)

Downfall concentrates on the last ten days of the life of Adolf Hitler, from his fifty-sixth birthday on the twentieth of April to the joint suicide with his wife Eva Braun. The film was meticulously researched using the memoirs of the surviving protagonists, including Hitler’s favoured secretary, Traudl Junge, and the diaries of Albert Speer: Architect and Armaments Minister to the Third Reich.

The film’s strength is the manner in which it brilliantly captures the claustrophobia of Hitler and his court hiding away in an underground bunker as the Red Army approaches the centre of Berlin. The parallel world of the debauched bunker is contrasted with the real suffering of German civilians and soldiers, many of whom are fighting to the last woman and child. One moment that displays the insanity of the imminent collapse is Eva Braun boldly announcing a party to liven the mood. The party is interrupted by Russian shells landing outside the building resulting in an undignified rush for the security of the Chancellery Bunker. The strength of Downfall is that we are able to enter the warped reality of the Nazi cult: a world of blind unquestioning devotion and the denial of reality. This is perfectly illustrated by Magda Goebbels encouraging her children to sing patriotic songs for Uncle Adolf as the Russians squeeze the last breath out of a dying regime.

Bruno Ganz is terrific as Hitler - the violent mood swings; the periods of delusion as he appoints someone to command a non-existent air-force - and it is the mannerisms such as the brushing away of his fringe from his forehead that make his performance so compelling. There has been criticism in the national press for the film’s underlying sympathetic portrayal of the Nazis and ignoring of their atrocities. It is true that the film does portray the Germans as victims of the Nazi regime and Hitler’s megalomaniac delusions. However, surely any film that is told from the German point of view is going to do this.

The director Oliver Hirschbiegel has been accused by historians of glossing over Traudl Junge’s loyalty to the Nazi party and her marriage to an SS officer. These criticisms seem to amount to jealousy at a film that displays the fanaticism of many ordinary Germans caught up in the Nazi ideology. The scene that will linger in my memory is that of a nurse who has been tending the German wounded falling at the feet of the Fuhrer in desperation for a miracle to save Germany. I have yet to see any recent Hollywood film show such a degree of honesty and integrity over its own country’s chequered past. Downfall’s strength is that it shows Germany is coming to terms with its past and leaves it to the audience to judge.