Downfall Review

Number 127 on top 1000 films of all time is the German WW2 film: Downfall.

Set in Nazi Germany, Downfall explores the last ten days of Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz) and other prominent Nazis.

As a Western viewer, it's always interesting to see WW2 films that are set on the side of the Germans.  With Das Boot as an example, these films don't see to either romanticise or vilify the Germans, but rather objectively portray the war from their perspective.

Downfall also succeeds in this.  With the Russians closing in from the East and the Allies from the West, Nazi Berlin will surely fall.  Here we see the Nazi government, once so united, begin to implode.  Paranoia starts to circulate and tensions rise.  Some Nazis like Himmler give up and seek to escape Berlin.  But others like Goebbels and Hitler himself refuse to surrender, even if that means losing everything.

Although Downfall portrayed Hitler at his most abhorrent, with him enacting a scorched-earth policy to punish the German people, whom he thinks have failed him, it also portrays him as completely human.  Yes, Hitler is undoubtedly evil, but what Downfall does is complicate this.  We see a man clinging desperately onto a dying ideology.  The cracks in his facade appear, as he struggles to accept his reality.  this is down to Bruno Ganz' excellent performance.  He portrayed Hitler, as a multi-layered man.

As well as complicating Hitler, Downfall also complicates his Nazi leaders.  Again, while they're definitely not romanticised, they are portrayed with shades of grey.  While Hitler spits in the face of compassion, officials like Albert Speer plead for him to spare the German people.  Although this isn't universal, some of them are as ruthless as Hitler, executing anybody who runs away.  Other Nazis lynch innocent Germans to serve as a warning for the approaching Russians.

Downfall also explores themes of complicity and ignorance through characters like Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary.  The film is bookended with the real Traudl Junge explaining the guilt she feels for not doing enough to realise the truth of what was happening.

Interlinked with the main narrative are two subplots, one of a Nazi doctor who refuses to abandon his patients and another of a Hitler Youth, seeking to return to his family.  Both of these subplots helped to ground the main action and added a more human touch to the film.

Although it wasn't a Holocaust film as such, Downfall definitely had its disturbing parts to it.  Most notably, are the scenes where Hitler and Eva Braun discuss different suicide methods and Magda Goebbels poisoning her children.  There were also large party scenes, as some of the Nazis refused to face reality.  These different responses to grief also helped to nuance the film.

Downfall was an interesting film, which helped to colour in some very black and white characters.  It was challenging watch, but a necessary one all the same.