The Downfall / Der Untergang (2004)

Here's a review I wrote last month. As I said I'd like to use this blog for reviews, and here's the first.
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The movie begins with darkness and the aged and decrepit voice of Traudl Junge telling the audience that what compelled her to go for the a job interview was essentially curiosity. She meets her employer, a small man with a stoop and a moustache along with a string of hopefull secretaries. He asks them humbly their names and when they try to address him officially he says "None of that, please". He finally reaches Traudl. He smiles and invites her into the office first. He asks her to type a letter he has written - he will dictate, adding "You'll do better than me with the typing." As she types she makes a terrible mistake and stops typing altogether. The would-be employer, we think, would start screaming or at least get sarcastic, but he smiles and tells her to start again. In the end she gets the jobs before anyone else could be interviewed. This scene sounds pleasant but in actual fact it is incredibly disturbing. That is because this pleasant employer is Adolf Hitler. It's the year 1942 - Germany is winning the War so far and the document she was typing was a speech for an event that was a decade away - the 20th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power as Chancellor of Germany.

The voice-over that precedes the above scene is not an actress but a real clip from an interview by Traudl Junge, most likely from the documentary "Blind Spot" released in 2002, the year of her death (unseen by me). The full quote is "I've got the feeling that I should be angry with this child, this young and oblivious girl. Or that I'm not allowed to forgive her for not seeing the nature of that monster. That she didn't realise what she was doing. And mostly because I've gone so obliviously. Because I wasn't a fanatic Nazi. I could have said in Berlin, 'No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to go the Führer's headquarters.' But I didn't do that. I was too curious. I didn't realise that fate would lead me somewhere I didn't want to be. But still, I find it hard to forgive myself." Traudle Junge insists that she can never forgive herself for liking this man who was kind towards her and who, despite his well-known temper, never took it out on her or his mistress, Eva Braun, or any other secretary. It is almost impossible for her to unite the kindness he had shown her with the man we all loathe. "The Downfall" is about many things. Essentially its the last two weeks (aproximately) in the life of Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich. But on a deeper level its explores the strange character that is Adolf Hitler and the effect he had on the German people, those who never met him and those who knew him personally. Hitler seems to have a magnetic quality, both as an individual as a politician. He could inspire underlings to lay down their life for him without even trying. It also explores his inconsistancies, most noteably the fact that he could be pleasant in private yet did what he did without regret, even in the end. The director of this movie, Oliver Hirschbiegel, plays a dangerous gamble - he doesn't depict Hitler as a raving madman but as a human who could feel and love, but the movie is no appologetic for Nazism or for Hitler. His humanity only makes him more monstrous. He is not depicting as being entirely insane but as relatively lucid, although it does hint that he is deeply disturbed. By the end it would a stretch to call the Hitler depicted in the movie as flattering for the historical character.

The Downfall is also, essentially, a disturbing, protracted dance of death - all the characters realize early in this epic that they might not reach the end alive and they try to rage against the inevitable as much as possible. Some try to do good in a world where there is only evil and madness, others only feed the evil more. Some even dance and hold party, almost like the musicians on the sinking Titanic. In the centre of it all stands the wretched Master of Ceremonies, prolonging it beyond neccesary. What shocks the most about this movie it that people are willing to go along with it all.

The Third Reich is depicted not so much as crumbling but imploding, a place of chaos and anarchy with no common sense whatsoever. Russian Red Army troops are pounding Berlin with artillary from long distances. Hitler's associates, Airmarshal Herman Goering and Heinrich Himmler both plan to put Hitler out of power one way or another. Himmler wonders whether he should give General Eisenhower the Nazi salute or a handshake. Meanwhile Hitler orders something of a scorched earth policy - that all powerplants, railways, hospitals and such should be demolished to leave nothing for the invading forces. He also refuses to evacuate the city, stating coldly that in this war there are no civilians. He even orders civilians who are found not fighting in the war should be executed. Nazi Party officials in normal clothes stalk the city, hanging anyone not fighting from streetlamps as traitors and communists. Even children of twelve and thirteen are recruited to protect Berlin, laying their lives down for the Chancellor. Hitler himself, being something of a Social Darwinist, does not mind the fact that Germany gets destroyed because he believes that this is a process of natural selection - that if Germany can't survive this war then it must come to an end.

German actor Bruno Ganz portrays Hitler as a complex character, who is mentally disturbed but still very lucid in his decisions. Whatever invisible scars he carries its obvious that he's being eaten away by Parkinson's disease and possibly Alzheimers as his orders for restarting the Reich after his death rely on things that do not exists (off course he could be just deceiving himself). There are scenes where he rants like those old newsreels of the real Hitler, but mostly he's reserved and quiet caught up in his own world. At one point Traudl discusses Hitler with Eva Braun. His mistress of 15 years admits she doesn't know much about him, stating that he only talks about his dog and vegetarian meals. Both come to the conclusion that he has many faces - in private he's silent and reserved and when in front of his generals he's the Führer, a cold man. Hitler is also depicted as a master politician - that is, that he's a good liar. For instance, when he dictates his "political will and testament" you'd swear by the opening paragraphs that he's the humblest man on earth. Only moments before, though, he ranted about his generals and the German people letting him down. As the story progresses his hair turn gray and he ages twenty years in 10 days.

Almost more terrifying than Hitler is Herr Doktor Goebels, the Minister of Propaganda. He is depicted as being a sane follower of Hitler. He stalks the movie, his face guant with a scars resembling a vulture's, and when he talks he speaks like a propaganda broadcast. He is so mesmerized by Hitler that he immediately has an answer ready for Hitler's orders regarding the civilians. The answer sounds logical and intellectual, but is actually monstrously cold-hearted. Off course Hitler moves into his bunker under the Reichstag and Goebels, his wife Magda, his children, Traudl and others come along. The Goebel children sing songs in a perfect little choir for Hitler and the people of the bunker. As they did I felt extremely sad when I saw them because I knew the cruel fate their parents had in store for them. "A merciful God would understand," Magda Goebels writes in a letter, anticipating the event, a sentance showing how they attempted to fashion God, even privately, in their own image.

The movie is mainly told through the eyes of Frau Junge, but other characters intersect into the narrative. One is the radio-operator of the bunker, another the general who is given the task of defending Berlin. Then there is the tale of an SS-officer Prof. Dr. Ernst-Günter Schenck who defies all orders to help suffering Germans. All he tries to do is the right thing. Eventually he is called to the bunker with another doctor who gives tips to Hitler on how to conduct a successful suicide. This plot thread is one of my only complaints against the movie - the real life Ernst-Günter Schenck was deservedly sent to prison from crimes against humanity commited in the concentration camps and to depict him as a sympathetic character is a highly questionable artistic decision considering how much thought went into this movie. In fact, it practically undermines the whole production. Its not a fatal artistic flaw, but it is a rather big one.

Another tale that flows into the story is also that of a young boy decorated by Hitler personally with an Iron Cross medal for destroying several Russian tanks with a Panzerfaust. While he's fighting his father is trying to get him back home, away from the front, but he believes his father is a coward (despite the fact that he lost an arm in the war). All these characters drift through the narrative, stuck in a situation they can't understand. Why is everyone willing to lay down their life in a totally absurd battle? Why is everyone willing to die for Hitler even after his death and carry out orders that will secure the suicide of the Germany? Even Eva Braun is willing to follow Hitler to the end despite the fact that his personal orders widows her sister. She intercedes for her brother-in-law, but accepts Hitler's orders to have him executed unflinchingly. She is just as mesmorized as everyone else.

Ultimately the movie raises questions about Hitler that it doesn't answer, but that is not a flaw. The questions about Hitler, how such a cruel man can be kind and how people are willing to die for him despite it being clear that he's neither a saviour nor a saint, can not be answered by a single three hour movie. These questions have no easy answers. But the movie succeeds in other departments, especially in reminding us that evil, even in relatively black and white cases like World War Two, is never simple; it can be intellectually justified by those commiting the evil and can be hidden in pleasant, seemingly benign people. It also reminds us that Hitler was not alone to blame for World War 2, but that he had many people who believed what he believed. That is the ultimate key to the Nazi attrocities - Hitler sadly had a lot of help because many believed that he was the answer to their troubles. This is an excellent but very disturbing reminder on the tragic, cruel and terrible impact Hitler left on the world, and why his American relatives changed their names and promised the world they'll never have children.