Movie : Downfall ( Der Untergang) Drama

Directed by Oliver Hirshbiegel

Being married to The Hub, I have seen my share of war movies. Most of them I haven't exactly wanted to see....but I've seen some intense war movies. I saw Hamburger Hill. I saw Saving Private Ryan, mostly through my fingers.

Downfall, in German with English subtitles, is more than a war movie. It's a movie that makes you feel like you have been to war.....

It's horrifying. The movie chronicles the last days of Hitler and those who were with him in the final days of his government. It's told primarily through the eyes of the late Traudl Junge, who appears briefly at the end of the movie. She served as Hitler's secretary from 1942 til he ended his life by suicide.

The movie is stunningly historically accurate. I got roped into seeing this much more willingly than I would have gone to see a "war movie", because I admit to a sort of morbid fascination with The Third Riech. These guys, the Nazi's were so evil on such a scale I have always wondered how they got, kept, and maintained their power

So I knew what I was getting into. I wasn't under the illusion that it had a happy ending. But scenes that I had steeled myself for dealing with as they happened "off screen" ( I guess because I couldn't imagine the trauma of filming them) were shown with the same attention to accuracy that characterized this film.

Moreover, it was VERY well acted with not a bad performance in the bunch. And these are terribly difficult characters to portray without going "over the top". Bruno Ganz does a tremendous job playing Hitler in his many moods, from the eerily charming dapper gentleman to the screaming psychotic rage ball. I really felt like I was looking through a window in time....and wishing, with all my heart, that I could close it.

There were several scenes in this movie that were so shocking ( those of you who are aware of the fate of the Goebbels' children can guess what I'm talking about) that I would have gotten up and gone out into the lobby if I could have managed to get onto my feet. No one need be concerned that this movie puts a "human" face on Hitler or the Nazis. Rather, it unsentimentally and unflinchingly portrays the evil, narrisism, and sheer insanity that was the downfall of Nazi Germany. Sure, there are places where Hitler is shown to have something in common with human beings - even Hitler had a dog. But those scenes only more brightly contrast his stunning arrogence, cruelty, and distance from reality.

As hard as this movie was to watch, it was instructive even for a "social history" buff like me. In all of the reading I had done, I still felt no closer to understanding the strange combination of fear, duty and insanity....the zietgiest of WWII Germany than I did when I plowed my way through the William Shirer tome.

But, I found Traudl Junge a sympathetic character, albiet the only one in the movie. Through her it is made clear that these were the days LONG before any young person ever drempt of Questioning Authority, that this was a society that placed a high value on loyalty. In Junge's case, it is personal loyalty to a man she has served for 2 years, a relutance to leave a crazy old man at a time when everyone else is abandoning him. But Junge is hardly a heroine, a point she makes herself in an interview taped before her death at the end of the movie. Junge's paltry efforts to make things better in the bunker are offset by her paralyzing fear. And early in the movie, when she thinks about leaving, she ponders where she would go. "My family warned me not to get involved with the Nazis. What can I do? Go home and say I made a mistake?" I found that line enlightening for two reasons. It shows the deadly sin of pride in all it's radiant, banal, oh-so-human splendor. The young secretary's unwillingness to admit to her parents that she was wrong is mirrored all the way up into the highest positions of power. Why didn't one of these milatary men just take out a pistol and shoot Hitler in the head when they realized he was nuts? Well, that would mean they had been nuts too, that they had followed an insane leader, that all they had worked for had been, at best a mistake, an illusion. Secondly, it makes clear that Junge simply could not think of what else to do. It didn't OCCUR to her to take decisive action. Looking back, through the comfortable distance of the years, we all like to think we'd have been another Deitrich Bonhoffer or Oscar Schindler....but, in this country half the people don't even rouse themselves to go out to the polls at election time, telling themselves they can't make a difference. That's the almost equally deadly, but far less celebrated sin of apathy. It's that voice that tells you as you're doing something objectionable "Hey, if I didn't do it they'd just get someone else to lie under oath/ forge the document / make the harrassing phone call / insert the moral crisis of your own career or life here" When we answer, in our own hearts, how many times in our own lives we have "gone along to get along" we are closest to understanding how evil reigned in a democratic nation and went on to nearly conquor Europe in the 20th century.

If you have a high level of tolerance for graphic portrayals of lost limbs, child soldiers, and brain matter / spatter then by all means go and get yourself a history lesson. If not, and you decide to go anyway then by all means take an end seat and / or an airsick bag. This movie is NOT for children ( and mercifully, there were none at the showing I attended) If you're on medication, take it before you go. If not, you might need some when you come out. I'm not saying it's a bad movie - on the contrary - it was well written, directed, and acted. It's honest without being preachy. Yeah, there's some banality to this evil but it's mostly a pretty active evil bringing about death, mental breakdown, and unspeakable suffering.

It's not just a movie...it's an experience. And I really hope I'm not experiencing it in the form of nightmares for the next three weeks. But as Hitler said "It's too late now"