Review of Downfall (1997) by Daniel M — 17 Mar 2012

After 22-year-old secretary Traudl Junge has an eerie prologue set in 1942, when she enters Hitler's Berlin bunker, she doesn't really appear much in Downfall... until the closing few scenes (the main story is in May of 1945), when she provides its "make it out alive" catharsis.

(She died in 2002, her Nazi past absolved because she was just a "young follower.") Junge's appearance in most of DOWNFALL is not the most thoughtful, well-constructed, well-acted; she has a perpetual expression of "Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?".

.. fairly annoying honestly. But the meat of the film, witnessing the Third Reich's horrific final days, is spread among many more interesting characters: Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, Heino Ferch as Speer, Christian Berkel as Schenck, and of course Bruno Ganz's nerve-wracking lead performance as Hitler.

.. and a taboo-breaking one, as he's the first German to play the Fuhrer on screen. There are some cutaways to young child soldier Peter and twentysomething Junge that are weaker than the main story; but I like the heft and the ambition enough in Bernd Eichinger's screenplay to overlook some of director Oliver Hirschbiegel's poor choices.

Besides "Shells whistling" (Netflix Instant has captions for some reason) as well as eternal variations on "We have to leave." / "No!", DOWNFALL brews a potent mix of bureaucratic pageantry, pages fluttering down and cars pulling out, and "Clausewitz" (some sort of fatal end plan) discussed in a variety of tones between a variety of people.

Hitler has a healthy array of compelling/disgusting lines to deliver... Save civilians? "In a war like this, there are no civilians"... "It is immaterial if the people survive"... "Compassion is a primal sin.

" But it's his fellow high officials, debating whether to be a loyal soldier (stay) or rational thinker (go), that might give the theme more nuance: for instance, the loyal soldier derisively accusing the rational thinker of being "an opportunist, a ruthless careerist.

".