(This review was originally written in March, when Downfall was playing the American art house circuit; I'm reposting it here in slightly edited form as the film was released onto DVD last week. One mild caveat: spoilers abound in this post.)
Downfall, the new German-produced film about the last days of Hitler, is playing this week at San Jose's Santana Row cinema.
It's a fascinating, not to mention horrifying movie.
Fascinating in that it has a surprisingly clinical, almost documentary-like feel, with near-forensic accuracy to detail about life in and around the bunker, and horrifying because, well, it's Nazi Germany.
Three quarters of the story's plot should be familiar to anyone who paid attention in high school history class, watched the endless reruns on The History Channel, or saw the previous attempts at filming Hitler's last days in the 1970s and early 1980s with Alec Guinness and then Anthony Hopkins each taking a turn wearing the tiny moustache.
The Definitive Culture of Death
From its start, Nazi Germany was (arguably along with the Soviet Union), the 20th century's definitive Culture of Death. In Downfall, when Hitler realizes that the Russians are closing in, he has his personal physician prepare several glass cyanide capsules, and asks the doctor to explain to him the most lethal way to blow his own brains out in the instants remaining to him after biting down on the glass, but before the poison takes effect.
To test their effectiveness, Hitler first gives one capsule to Blondi, his German Sheppard, and clenches her jaws shut to force her to bite into the glass; she immediately keels over.
As soon as they showed the dog standing near Hitler and the physician, I knew this moment was coming--but even so, I found myself physically grimacing and recoiling in my chair, perhaps because it dredged up memories of four years ago when we put our 16-year-old retriever to sleep.
Or maybe I just don't like seeing an innocent dog sucking on a glass vial of cyanide, no matter how evil her master is.
It was then that I sort of mentally kicked myself--by that point, the film had depicted dozens and dozens of deaths, and of course, the real life Nazis themselves had killed 50 million people by 1945. But until Blondi's death, I become increasingly numbed by the cumulative amount of horrors depicted on screen.
Article comments