WITNESSING THE UGLY DEATHWATCH FOR HITLER’S REICH

DOWNFALL
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegl; screenplay by Bernd Eichinger, based on Hitler by Joachim Fest and Bis zur letzten Stunde by Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller; cinematography by Rainer Klausmann; editing by Hans Funck; production design by Bernd Lepel; art direction by Gregor Mager; set decoration by Joachim Keppler; costume design by Claudia Bobsin
With: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Juliane Köhler, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel, Matthias Habich, Thomas Kretchmann, Michael Mendl, André Hennicke, Ulrich Noethen, Birgit Minichmayr, and Dunevan Gunia. Rated R for strong violence, disturbing images and some nudity. Running time: 156 minutes



Reviewed by Joel Johnson

The Third Reich, proclaimed the Thousand Year Reich, tottered on the brink of destruction in April 1945, just twelve years after being established. The founder and architect of the Third Reich, Adolph Hitler, would celebrate his fifty-sixth birthday on April 20, 1945, confined to a bunker in Berlin. Russian troops rapidly approached the city. Allied troops had penetrated Germany from the west and were also closing in on Berlin. Young boys, old men, and women were pressed into service to oppose the armies that had come to destroy Hitler’s dream. Even if you do not have a scholar’s knowledge of World War II, you know Germany was losing the war, and V-E (Victory in Europe) was just days away. It was only a matter of time before Allied troops would be at the very entrance to Hitler’s bunker. Inside the bunker, Hitler and his closest followers grappled with the reality that the end of National Socialism, or Nazism, was at hand.

The challenge for film director Oliver Hirschbiegl and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger was to make a compelling film from a story that everyone knows. There’s no surprise ending. The Allies defeated Nazi Germany. Many—if not most—viewers will know what happened to several of the principal characters featured in this film. Furthermore, the focus of this film is on a pocket of humanity that bears major responsibility for a conflict that the film acknowledges killed more than 50 million people. Some estimates of combat and civilian dead—including those systematically murdered in Nazi death camps—rise to 57 million. By comparison, World War I—also known as The Great War and The War to End All Wars—resulted in 15 million combat and civilian dead. Those present in Hitler's bunkered headquarters include many people who knew about, ordered, and/or carried out crimes against humanity. These are not people with whom one easily identifies and for whom one feels much sympathy. Yet one does become enshrouded in the tragic gloom of the Nazi regime’s deathwatch.

One reason for this is that the film has several characters that serve as moral ballast as we become witnesses to a Berlin under siege and to the claustrophobic confinement of the Nazi elite. There are physicians overwhelmed by having to treat the countless maimed and dying with inadequate supplies and insufficient personnel. There are child-soldiers on the front line in the streets of Berlin and their sick-with-worry parents. There are officers and civilian leaders that know the war is lost and that each day the fighting continues wastes lives. Some respond nobly, and others just seek their own escape, yet we can identify with their emotions.

There’s also Hitler’s typist Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), a coauthor of one of the books on which the film is based. This woman was also the subject of a documentary entitled Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary. The young and naïve Traudl remains devoted to the Führer and doesn’t understand that Hitler’s ranting about some general or other’s army suddenly turning the war’s tide is the wishful thinking of a madman. Though Lara, a native Romanian brought up in Germany, has appeared in a number of European films, she is likely unfamiliar to most Americans. Only viewers of the recent Masterpiece Theatre production of Doctor Zhivago (2002) may recognize her as Zhivago’s first wife Tonya (played by Geraldine Chaplin in the 1965 film). One suspects that the beautiful young actress could well become much more familiar. Lara has the thankless job of being a stand-in for an entire nation that was charmed and seduced by a passionate man who offered Germany greatness. With her open, guileless face, Lara manages to capture our sympathy even if we are incredulous at how she has misplaced her trust in the disintegrating Hitler (Bruno Ganz).

Bruno Ganz is another reason for how the film draws in its audience. He delivers one of the bravura performances of the year as Adolph Hitler. Ganz apparently worked hard to match Hitler’s vocal inflections. American audiences may not fully appreciate his work to sound like Hitler, but just speaking German gives Ganz’s Hitler an authenticity that no English-speaking portrayal of Hitler can achieve. This is exactly the same authenticity that Mel Gibson was able to achieve by having his actors speak Aramaic and Latin in The Passion of the Christ. However, Ganz does more than just speak German. His portrayal shows both Hitler’s personal charm and his explosive power. Despite the overwhelming evidence that defeat is inevitable, he issues dangerous orders that command soldiers not to retreat and to fight on to the last man. He concocts wild scenarios in which devastated armies would coalesce into forces capable of stopping the onrushing enemies. Hitler’s willingness to continue to fight for the hopeless cause costs a deadly toll each additional day of fighting. Despite the acknowledgment by most of the military leaders around him that he has lost sight of Germany’s real situation, no one dares to openly oppose Hitler except for Albert Speer (Heino Ferch), who uses carefully chosen words to tell him that he did not carry out his orders for “scorched earth” policies that would have devastated ordinary Germans. The film has been criticized for portraying Hitler not simply as a monster but as a human being. A man who could be kind to his people, who could order the wholesale destruction of other groups of people, and who seems pathetic with his severely palsied left hand as he begins to understand how his Reich is collapsing. While it may be comforting to think of Hitler as just being a monster, it was a human who inveigled his way into power and then began working on a monstrous agenda. We must be continually vigilant for the Hitlers in our midst who would have us do their evil. Some commentators have expressed dissatisfaction with the film because they feel it whitewashes the role of ordinary Germans. Many eagerly—even gleefully—participated in the worst atrocities of the Nazi regime. Ganz’s Hitler rants that the Third Reich has been undone by the weakness of the German people. Stating that the devastation that ensues is “what the German people deserve,” he issues hopeless, virtually suicidal orders for the German people. The filmmakers would seem to agree that this is indeed what the German people deserve, but not because they have betrayed the Fatherland by being unwilling to sacrifice for the war effort. It was because they deified a messianic madman.

The film also offers Juliane Köhler’s excellent and unsettling portrayal of Eva Braun. Köhler’s Eva is vivacious and superficial—a fun-loving party girl and enthusiastic cheerleader for the Third Reich. Yet her enthusiasm is based not on ideological identification with the Nazis but on it being her Adolph’s cause. She could have been similarly cheering on his bowling or croquet team. She seems oblivious to the defeat that nearly everyone else feels is obvious. Yet Eva is aware of the culture of death that is growing around her and plans to join in suicide the man she has just married. Despite these signs of ultimate commitment, she acknowledges to Traudl that she really doesn’t know Hitler. It feels very tragic that she is willing to die for a man who allows no one to “really get close to [him].”

Perhaps the most disturbing characters in the film are Joseph (Ulrich Matthes) and Magda (Corinna Harfouch) Goebbels. They and their five children—four daughters and a son—are the poster family for the Nazi Aryan ideal. All five children are beautiful and have blond hair like their mother. They perform patriotic songs and entertain the bunker dwellers like a Nazi version of the von Trapp Family singers. The Goebbels exude a frosty sense of superiority and are true believers in National Socialism. They remain steadfastly committed to the cause. Others around the Goebbels waver in their belief in Nazism, or perhaps it had only been opportunism that had led the others to support the Nazis. The tightly coiled emotions of the pair crack only once—as they beg Hitler to leave Berlin to continue the fight elsewhere. When he refuses, they conclude that life without National Socialism is not worth living. This leads to the film’s most harrowing sequence.

Although I have pointed out just a few key performances, the entire ensemble is terrific. There are no weak performances. There simply are far too many actors in this large-cast production to individually recognize each one.

The production designer and the art director have done an excellent job in recreating the confined world of the bunker below ground and above ground a city so pock-marked with devastation that even the pock-marks have pock-marks. The cinematography by Rainer Klausmann makes us feel the bunker’s sense of entrapment and wan pallor of ill health shared by its denizens. These are critical to establishing the “you-are-there” reality of Germany on the brink of defeat. This is very powerful filmmaking, and the cast and crew can boast making the best German war movie—and a very antiwar movie, at that—since Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot. They have taken a story that everyone knows and brought it to life, making its horror, its devastation, and its lessons more vivid.  

 

5 1/2" x 5" 2008 Wolf Moon Calendar just $10.00 each
More Info

More Info

© Wolf Moon Press 2002-2008 all rights reserved.

Submission Guidelines