Movie Review: Downfall

By April 1945, the Third Reich was a shadow, a wraith, of its former self. With the Soviet Red Army on the outskirts of Berlin, Hitler and his remaining followers hid themselves from the world and reality in a bunker under the Reich Chancellory. What occurred in this surreal and intense environment is the subject of the film Der Untergang (Downfall).

With an immaculate eye for detail, the director Oliver Hirschbiegel and producer/screenwriter Bernd Eichinger have recreated the final days of Hitler. The supporting cast of Nazi officials, Wehrmacht officers, SS ideologues and office staff revolve around the central, tragic figure of Adolf Hitler, played with uncanny versimillitude by the Swiss actor Bruno Ganz. Alternating between poles of euphoria and depression, futile hope and suicidal resignation, Hitler stumbles almost blindly through these last days, sometimes seemingly unaware that Ragnarok is going on around him. A few of his companions in the bunker share his delusions -- Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels and his wife Magda, with their six children, cling to the illusion of the Thousand Year Reich until the very end. Others, especially the military commanders trying in vain to explain to Hitler that there is nothing they can do to avoid the inevitable defeat, roll their eyes in frustration and discuss amongst themselves the best way to commit suicide.

There is a tendency to see the Nazis as monsters, as non-human creatures, or alternatively as charicatures or abstracts. What this film does is show that despite the acts that they committed, the Nazis were real people, with real human emotions and connections. To see Hitler show kindness to his secretaries, play with his dog, shed tears when a long time friend (Speer) admits that he is abandoning him, all this does not detract from his crimes, as some critics have argued. In fact, to see the kind and caring side of Hitler makes the evil side seem more dark. It is more frightening to recognise that the Nazis were not unrecognisable monsters or historical abstractions, for to realise that these were real people reminds us to not to treat the Holocaust or the Nazis as an aberration, but as a constant possiblity that we must be vigilant to prevent from happening again.

There is a tendency to demonise our enemies. We see it today in the War Against Terror, with certain elements of society treating Osama bin Ladin, al-Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalism as something incomprehensible. This film is a reminder that to fully understand the enemy, we must see them from all angles, not as monsters but as humans who commit montrous acts.