Movie Review: Downfall - Page 2

This movie doesn’t dissipate time attempting to explain what this distraught madman did. No film can cover that ground sufficiently and any attempt to do so would be discourteous. Instead, Downfall gives us the fall of the Third Reich as the story of the individuals who strove to hold it up. It is the story of Hitler, but it is also the story of Joseph (Ulrich Matthes) and Magda (Corinna Harfouch) Goebbels and their allegiance to National Socialism that is so strong that they kill their own children. It is the story of Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler) and her obsession with Hitler.

Downfall forces its audience to regard this lunatic and his operation without recoiling and without turning away. Ganz creates a Hitler that is so unspeakably authentic and so oddly human that it is truly a sight to behold. He inhabits the monster without uncertainty, replicating his tenor and speech with precision. It is true that Ganz’s Hitler looks older than the Führer was at the time of his death (Hitler was 56, Ganz was 62), but the aged look adds a more crippling sense of heaviness to the historical figure.

Hirschbiegel’s film is tough to watch because it ought to be. At a time in history in which the world faced profound malevolence and despondency, the disinclination to view the atrocity of the Third Reich as anything other than a sadistic force is comprehensible. But with the passage of time comes the passage of unprocessed emotion. While some wounds never heal, Downfall provides those of us with a curiosity through the sting to examine the figure of Adolf Hitler with steadfast eyes and open minds.

Here, he is not presented as a man to be understood. He is not presented as a man to commiserate with. Rather, he is presented here as a figure to be pitied for his wretched subsistence. And, perhaps most decisively of all, he is presented as a figure who most surely did not act alone. But for the tacit and fervent approval of many, the Third Reich and Nazism never would have risen in the world.

As Traudl Junge reminds us at the end of Downfall, there is no reason to be blind to history.

Article Author: Jordan Richardson

Jordan Richardson is a Canadian freelance writer. His interests are diverse and his wine glass is almost always half full.

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