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Downfall 
Actors : Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler
Director : Oliver Hirschbiegel
Studio : Sony Pictures
by Sony Pictures
Release Date : 2005-08-02
Publisher : Sony Pictures
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9781404987609
UPC : 043396115453
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 345 reviews)
List Price : $14.94
Our Price : $7.95
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Americancivilwar.com |
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The riveting subject of Downfall is nothing less than the disintegration of Adolf Hitler in mind, body, and soul. A 2005 Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, this German historical drama stars Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) as Hitler, whose psychic meltdown is depicted in sobering detail, suggesting a fallen, pathetic dictator on the verge on insanity, resorting to suicide (along with Eva Braun and Joseph and Magda Goebbels) as his Nazi empire burns amidst chaos in mid-1945. While staging most of the film in the claustrophobic bunker where Hitler spent his final days, director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Das Experiment) dares to show the gentler human side of der Fuehrer, as opposed to the pure embodiment of evil so familiar from many other Nazi-era dramas. This balanced portrayal does not inspire sympathy, however: We simply see the complexity of Hitler's character in the greater context of his inevitable downfall, and a more realistic (and therefore more horrifying) biographical portrait of madness on both epic and intimate scales. By ending with a chilling clip from the 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, this unforgettable film gains another dimension of sobering authenticity. --Jeff Shannon |
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A Warning That Never Goes Out Of Style |
Some people in Germany have accused this movie of attempting to "make harmless" the crimes of the Third Reich. This couldn't be further from the truth, and I'll explain why.
Bruno Ganz plays Hitler the man. Hitler the man who loves his dog, who is nice to his secretary, who loves his friends and spits at the people he thinks betray him, who tells those he cares about to save themselves even as he prepares to take cyanide, shoot himself, and then be burnt. This is a guy who, as long as he's not talking about the Jews or world domination, wouldn't be that hard to live with.
HOWEVER, this is still Hitler the monster. Being a vegetarian doesn't absolve him of being directly responsible for the deaths of millions or for throwing the entire world into war. Hitler the two-dimensional monster is inseparable from Hitler the three-dimensional man, and that is what this movie reminds us every time it makes you feel sorry for him even though you know, and the movie reminds you, that he was a monster.
All monsters in history--past, present, and future--were and are and will be human beings. We like to imagine Hitler as being some sort of inhuman monster, but he was only human. Far too human. That is why this movie makes people uncomfortable; it reminds them that any 'gee he seems like a nice fellow' leader of men could turn out to be a monster if the right questions are never asked or the ideas never challenged. The warning is an uncomfortable one: you cannot trust any ideologue on face value.
Not a single one, ever.
And /that/ is the real import of this movie, if "Never Again" is to have any sort of real meaning beside a catchphrase. Were I a history teacher, I would show this movie followed by /Schindler's List/. Both are equally true, and equally important sides of the story: all this horror is from mere humans borne. |
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All War,No Peace |
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be German. To rule the world and lose that position. Hitler, little do I know, did a lot of wrong things but he did a lot of right to lead men with enough armor in their hearts to fight the world. The Russians were kept at bay. Germany alone did everything and then there was "Der Untergang" ... Stunning storyline, sometimes or better known as history. Sigh. There's so much more to learn in life than how shoes lose their souls or soles, whichever you prefer.
I love the way the soldies, german soldiers, have an attitude of nonchalance as if nothing can possibly go wrong and they go about taking orders like they always have. So used to drudgening every possible enemy. I like that side of them. I like that side of humanity.
Downfall is a good film. I thought it would have ended when Hitler gives away. Rather than showing what happened to individual characters, if I was the director, I'd show what happened to the world than these few character names I would forget in a hurry.
I do not know German. I want to. Now. |
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Ist keine Entschuldigen |
Oliver Hirschbiegel "Downfall" is one of the most best written, directed, and acted films I've ever seen. It's also one of the most disturbing. Prefaced and concluded by excerpts from an actual interview with Trudl Junge, a young Bavarian woman who joined Hitler's secretarial pool in late 1942 and who was in the Fuhrerbunker when he killed himself, the film focuses on the last ten days of Hitler's life.
All of the characters one would expect to see in such a story are present. But Hirschbiegel and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger break away from the stereotypes of them as evil incarnate to present them as complexly tragic figures too. None of the key figures are morally exonerated; they come across all too often as truly brutal creatures who deserve the strongest condemnation. But we also see them as creatures who exhibit vestiges of humanity: Bruno Ganz's Hitler can be distantly caring in private even though a monster when in his role as leader; Magda Goebbels is a Nazi fanatic, but one can't help feel a bit of compassion for her mixed with revulsion when she poisons her children (the scene when the eldest daughter resists the "medicine" is heartbreaking); Eva Braun's inability to quite grasp what's happening, a characteristic of her shallow personality as much as the confusion of the final days, is both horrifying and infuriating, but also somehow touching. In short, the characters breathe, and help the viewer to go beyond one-dimensional stereotypes. Moreover, the film gives a good and chilling impression of the anarchy that broke out in Berlin as the Russian Army closed in: zealous diehard Nazis executing civilian Berliners in last-ditch attempts at "order"; children impressed into the Home Guard; ragged and starving civilians scrambling for a tin of food; SS officers committing suicide rather than surrendering; and ordinary soldiers, stripped of hope, drinking themselves into oblivion. The lessons are plain: war doesn't end neatly and cleanly. The evil wrought by warmakers such as Hitler doesn't die with them.
The visuals of the film are also superb. The Fuhrerbunker is stark, straight-lined, monochromatic, but also decorated with the occasional tacky bourgeois knicknack loved by Hitler. The blasted Berlin streets are desolating to see. The crowded underground scenes make one claustrophic.
In the interview at the film's end, Traudl Junge says that until a certain point in her post-war life, she was unable to see herself as in any way personally implicated in the horrors wrought by Hitler. She was, after all, just a secretary. But then one day she passed a monument to Sophie Scholl, the schoolgirl executed before the war for her "White Rose" resistance to the Nazis. Junge realized with a shock that Sophie and she were born in the same year. Then, Junge tells us, it came to her: even youth is no excuse--"ist keine Entschuldigen"--for either active collaboration or nonresistance to evil.
Highly recommended. |
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Absolutely mesmerizing. |
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I enjoy foreign films & am also a bit of a history buff. In the past few years I've been amazed by the quality of films coming out of Germany, & this one was particularly good. (Actually, I've always enjoyed German films, but it seems we don't get a lot of them in the U.S.) Bruno Ganz gives an amazing performance. Some may feel that it is a sympathetic portrayal, but that's not my reaction. I believe it gives a bit of a perspective on how an entire population might have been swayed by Hitler's personality, but it also reveals many of his weaknesses/idiosyncrasies/faults/pathologies. He was, after all, a human being, & this movie does show a human side to a man that orchestrated atrocities beyond comprehension. I recommend this movie as not only excellent cinema but as a reminder of history & a cautionary tale about charismatic figures. |
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a good story and a real mind sweaper |
when i watched this movie i was surprised and happy to see the germans takeing steps in makeing movies that teach the war from their point of view. you can not say it is 100% accruate but like all war movies it is their view and feeling on it.
this movie reminds us that thoes evil men who commited some of the worst crimes in history were indeed humen, and not only that they 100% truely belived in what the did was right and did not care if it was wrong.
some of the one star commits have some truth to them they died with no real honor but this movie was made in a way so you know how they were thinking and in their minds they made man kind better, and killed them selves in what they belived was their honor. that just shows you how and why the nazi power was unwaverd, how hitlers control was soo great that even in the end they belived in him. how ever it does show some who were afride to be cought and did not want to face trial so they ended them selvs.
some of the coments says it makes speer and others look like they were innocent good guys, the movie never makes any claims to such, nore does it try to pretend they were innocent. in the end of the the fall the german country was litterly being blown off the face of the earth, hitler wanting the whole german race to die for their weekness made it so the russians would keep on killing them till he surrenderd. not wanting to end the whole german race lots of officers even speer tried to surrender to the amercians, even himmler tried to deal with the amercians. because you want your people to survive does not make you a good guy, it just means he loved his country. now for the properganda i really did not notice any, all i noticed was it points out that a evil man such as hitler should never be forgotten cause for a short time the world revloved around his actions and it caused caos, and we should learn from this mistake the world. it also shows that even today the german people are still confused on how they should feel about him. he was a very evil man and should be hated but at the same time he is one of the most important person in their history.
if you love german fims in german with subs just remember forget the book this is a movie. i recremend this movie to all of thoes who have a learned mind and truely understands this view point, im not saying it is right or 100% accruate but it is a very good movie. |
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