Dialogue with the Movie "Downfall" - a movie review

Dialogue with the Movie: “Downfall”

Part One:  A Movie Review

Written by Dan McDonald

            The stern looking face of actor Bruno Ganz portraying Adolph Hitler is hopefully no one’s idea of a comforting image.  The movie “Downfall” was not made to be a comforting movie.  I was often intrigued by what I had read about the 2004 German movie, but never viewed it until recently.  I now regard it as one of the powerful masterpieces of cinematic accomplishment.

            This movie raised, reinforced, deepened and made me feel with powerful freshness issues of life that I am beginning to present here as a five blog response in dialogue with this movie.  Even so it can be hardly called comprehensive.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a masterfully made film is a library of contemplations.

 “Downfall” is well-researched and gives an important perspective concerning the final days of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime.  The focus is on Berlin as the massive Russian Army begins encircling the city.  There is numbness as people realize that the bursts striking outside the bunker, where Hitler’s headquarters reside, are no longer bombs but artillery shells launched from the outskirts of Berlin.  Inside Berlin, the focus of the film is on Hitler’s underground bunker, actually a large complex that had by this time become the headquarters for what remained of the Third Reich’s government.  Inside the bunker we see the variety of associates who work and reside alongside Hitler.  There are the like-minded party types, but also men of power who are allied to their ruler but having their own agendas.  There are also employees who are generally ordinary folk that came to Berlin for various reasons.  This view helps us to realize that the Nazi regime was not a monolithic group of dedicated Nazis.  It was a regime assisted by many who did not necessarily share Nazism’s ideological perspective.

            “Downfall” makes us rethink our thoughts on evil.  We often imagine evil in the form of a sinister heinous monster having lost all appearance of humanity.  We envision an evil monster surrounded by stereotyped entities of evil who have decisively determined to be bad guys and gals.  Sometimes we watch with passing pleasure an unrestrained evil type that seems simply to take pleasure in pursuing their passion for evil.  But that is seldom how evil presents itself.  The prince of darkness shows himself in the form of an angel of light, appealing to our good natures to assist him with a cause; a cause presented as good and desirable.  Sometimes the cause is the good of one’s country pitted against an enemy viewed as sinister.  The other country is likewise drawn into the conflict with similar enticements.  Evil is presented as good that we may be distracted, deceived and drawn into its service.

            “Downfall” portrayed Adolph Hitler with a genuine human face.  It did this by looking at the downfall of the Third Reich from the perspective of Hitler’s youngest personal secretary.  The movie, while also using other sources of material, chiefly brings to life the memories described by an elderly Gertraud (Trudl) Junge who told her story of the downfall, having served as Hitler’s personal secretary from 1942 until his death in 1945.  Hitler dictated for her to record, his last will and testament, as he prepared to commit suicide.  She remembered Hitler as an elderly gentleman with a human face.  She came gradually after the war to realize that he was a perpetrator of evil.  She also came to regard herself as a participant in evil.  She spent decades, often living as a recluse, overcome by depression and her unsatisfied conscience.

Because the movie shows Hitler with a human face, and showing the Nazi regime as a multi-faceted web of people with varied interests; this movie helps us to see evil in a fresh way.  This movie, however, does not minimize or explain away evil.  If his personal secretary happened to see a human side to Hitler, we viewers of this film will also see how Hitler angrily ordered executions of men simply trying to escape Berlin’s doom.

Few things show the evil of Nazism any more than how remaining fanatic Nazi officers issued military weapons to children and commissioned them as German soldiers.  These children were called upon to face a massive army, that by all estimates, had been responsible for the destruction of nearly ninety percent of the soldiers and military equipment lost by the Germans during the course of World War II.  The Soviets had rallied from near defeat at Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad to gradually crush the German Army.  It did so not only with massive numbers of men, but also with superior tanks and the invention of the Katyusha rockets which revolutionized the use of fast moving light artillery.  These were hardened warriors who had defeated the German Army at its peak.  These were soldiers who would not flinch if a soldier with a boy’s face pointed a military weapon at them.  The officers who issued the weapons to these children were the real murderers of these children.  Only the scene of happy Goebbels’ children arriving at the bunker with thoughts of seeing Uncle Hitler rivals that scene in this movie’s presentation of evil.  It becomes clear that Frau Goebbels has brought the children to the bunker because she wants to insure that her children do not live in a world without National Socialism.  The creators of Nazism, facing their own deaths want yet others to also die.  This movie shows evil with a human face to show us that evil is really evil, with no other word to describe or explain it.  This movie should not be watched by children, NO NEVER!  But I do believe the themes of this movie need to be contemplated and discussed by adults wanting a world redeemed from evil.

“Downfall” is a cinematic masterpiece because it reminds us that evil approaches us with a human face.  Evil always approaches us with a human face.  That is how evil feeds upon us.  That is how evil deceives, enlists, employs, and entraps us.  Write it upon your understanding that evil will come to us wearing a human face.