Review: Downfall (2004) · 1:59am Sep 6th, 2015
This is simply one of the best World War II films I've ever seen.
Oliver Hirschbiegel's sprawling two and a half hour opus chronicles in frighteningly intimate detail the final ten days of Adolph Hitler's life, crafting a tightly wound narrative that never ever shy's from depicting Hitler in all of his monstrous mania, yet still manages to make these monstrous people feel strangely human, yet never make us feel sorry for them.
Hirschbiegel's direction does a masterful job at balancing the apocalyptic fall of Berlin and it's chaos with the tightly wound paranoia that dominates the labyrinthine and claustrophobic bunker where Hitler lurks. His camera work is dynamic and intimate, and his mastery of his actors is simply impeccable. The cinematography, by Rainer Klausmann, is stark and unadorned, with the lights of the bunker flickering on and off erratically in time with the rolling thunder of artillery fire outside. It helps create an increasingly suffocating and oppressive sense of being trapped in a hell of which there is no escape, with any semblance of peace or sanity slowly eroding away.
This is all perfectly encapsulated in Bruno Ganz's tour de force of a performance, creating a Hitler that is far from the broad caricatures most often seen in film. Instead, his Hitler is a shockingly restrained performance, with a perpetual sense of lurking evil underneath his sagging shoulders and gruff Austrian accented German. As the film goes on, he becomes increasingly decrepit and worn down, slowly wearing away until his final self termination. It's a crime that Ganz was robbed of an Oscar nomination, as his performance is simply astounding.
The rest of the cast, made out of a stable of seasoned German actors and actresses, are all simply incredible. The performances are incredibly naturalistic and real, and each is able to perfectly embody their character in a truly seamless manner. From Ulrich Matthes' ghoulish Joseph Gobbles, to Juliane Köhler's flightly Eva Braun, who seems to stubbornly refuse to accept the realities of her situation, to Thomas Kretschmann as the self centered Hermann Fegelein, the entire cast is simply on the absolute top of their game.
The film is book ended by frank and impassioned interviews with Traudl Junge, who served as Hitler's final secretary, and in many ways, is our eyes and ears for the events of the film. The interviews, filmed shortly before Traudl's death in 2002, are fascinating, and create a perfect counterpoint to the film's events. By seeing the actual Traudl fully admit to her complacency in turning a blind eye to the Nazi's atrocities, it makes us feel a connection to her, since the film in no way glorifies or eulogizes anything the Nazi's do. In many ways, it simply shows it for what it was: a horrific and destructive madness that ate the entirety of Germany from the inside out, in the process destroying it completely. There was never any glory in it. Just shameless madness and blood lust, driven by the single minded mania of Hitler himself, who in the end, killed himself (a moment depicted off screen, which, in many ways, helps highlight how in the end, he was a complete waste.
Downfall is an immensely powerful and forthright examination both Hitler, and the Nazi mindset itself. It pulls no punches, yet never seeks to exaggerate or inflate the events, instead showing them in their raw reality, unadorned and stark as real life.
5 out of 5 stars.
Wasn't this the film that spawned the Hitler Rants videos?
3371887
3371887 Yes. However, after seeing the real deal, the Hitler Rants just aren't as funny anymore... for me, at least
3371974 same here, more or less.
For instance, after watching Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful and Downfall, its harder to laugh at stuff like Hogan's Heroes or Springtime for Hitler, mostly because you realize that the Nazi's where dead serious, and killed millions upon millions of innocents, so to reduce them to the punchline of a tacky joke (like most of what Mel Brooks makes), feels oddly innapprorate. Its like making a joke about Jim Jones or Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy in my eyes.
However, Inglourious Basterds gets away with its 'those crazy nazi's' type humor because, for one thing, the brutality of the Nazi's is played completely straight and is treated seriously (as in the first 20 minutes), and any jokes that might come aren't so much making light of the Nazi's, but rather just infusing EVERYTHING in the movie with the same hyper reality, where everything is intentionally affected and amplified. Not sure if that makes sense, but given that pretty much EVERYONE in Inglourious Basterds is an intentionally kitchy charature, it makes sense that the Nazi's would be to.
Does that make any sense or am I just babbling?
3372126 I suppose it does.
3372126 You almost have to forget that they're Nazis in order to enjoy Hogan's Heroes. Which, given how much I love the show, I am perfectly willing to do.
3380345 and that's exactly why I have trouble.
Go figure, right?