I really thought someone had posted here about Downfall, but I can’t find the post. We saw this a couple of weeks ago. Riveting. Great performance by Bruno Ganz. There’s a lot of ways to look at this film: History is written by the winners, Hitler was a human being, blind devotion to power is scary, and – perhaps the most interesting – how innocent can an individual be of a government’s crime? I have a feeling we may be asking ourselves that a few times over the next few decades.
I don’t really want to go into it a whole lot, but it’s a fine movie. On another note, I had a dream last night I was in school, and had to do well in two classes, but they both had horrible teachers. One of the teacher’s was Hitler, and he was depressed, and wouldn’t teach us anything, and the class was held in the bunker. Man, Professor Hitler sucks.
I offered up a short talkback reply on Downfall in a post Reynolds penned about Robert Drew’s Primary in late July. I thought the film was pretty damn good–mostly due to Bruno Ganz’s performance and the film’s attempt to be accurate to those final days.
I just finished watching this film and, though very well shot and expertly performed, I have mixed feelings. Are we to applaud its “accuracy” and its “painstaking realism”? After all, this is just another version of events (events that exist only in their versions) and its a rather troubling version. I felt odd about they way the film distributes our sympathies: to Hitler, sick, dying, abandoned; to the youth, who weep at the idea of giving in; to the generals who fought a losing battle to convince the Fuehrer that theirs was a hopeless situation; to the faithful, who never betrayed their leader.
It’s that last group that troubles me the most. It’s as if the film is asking us to see how Nazi ideology was actually restricted to a small, inner circle of die-hard loyalists. Outside the circle were careerists at worst, decent officers and gentlemen at best. Only Hitler speaks of the Jews. And when he does, he who listens only half assents–and with visible discomfort. It’s subtle, but the film has given us an out.
The point maybe was that this is all from the secretary’s point of view (although it must be noted that the film is not, by any means, shot using only her point of view–she’s simply one of the main characters. I have not read her writings, nor have I seen the documentary upon which this film is based). In her young eyes, this was a great and caring man (hey, he loved dogs and preached vegetarianism!) who in his last few desperate days suffered more at the hands of his betrayers than anyone else (who cares if the Russians are only 100 metres away? What matters is that you play your string out until the end).
Traudl says something to the effect of “He’s a caring man, but then he says such brutal things.” So we’re supposed to be shocked and disturbed at the sight of this sick old man barking “traitors!” But I wasn’t. Nor was I disturbed by his speech about ridding Germany of the Jewish “poison.” In fact, what disturbs Traudl the most, what visibly shakes her to the bone and makes her wretch is not the paradox of Hitler but the scene (right out of Das Boot) of Germans drinking and dancing while Berlin turns to rubble. “It’s so surreal.” She says. What’s surreal, presumably, is the fact that no one seems to care–no one seems to realize that the Third Reich is coming to an end, that no one believes in the Fuhrer anymore. Perhaps no one ever did–not truly. Speer says “I never carried out your orders of destruction, on the contrary…” Ahh, see? The Germans were not so bad. Personally loyal to Hitler, maybe. But no more. It was only those guys in the bunker–and even in the bunker Hitler was persecuted by de-bunkers. It’s a corrupt metaphor: those in the bunker are deluded, those outside are not. Is this film trying to retell history?
At the end, the filmmakers give Traudl the opportunity to say something about her compromised position during these troubling events. Yes, she was young, but that’s no excuse. She could have found out about the atrocities. She could have tried, but she didn’t. She chose not to. Why is this tacked on at the end? To remind us that we were all guilty? Why wasn’t this the idea that guided the film from the beginning? It should have been form shaping. Instead, it’s a coda. This film is just a character portrait. A real virtuoso performance by Ganz to be sure, and he’s one of my favorite actors. But overall, it’s fluff in the “History Channel” style.
The film could have tried, but it didn’t. It chose not to.
Anyone see the review of Downfall in Harper’s? Reads like my review.
sure, he loved dogs, but I think they were the first to get the cyanide pills to see if they worked. but certainly there are good reasons to like Hitler:
1. he had style. Have you seen some of those beautifully made uniforms? Fabulous!
2. he always rewound the tapes be borrowed from Blockbuster before returning them
3. he was very good in those laurel and hardy movies as James Finlayson, the cross-eyed Scot who is always getting outraged at Stan and Ollie’s antic. He had a slow burn like no other.
4. he paid my way through summer fat camp.
5. he recommended a “secret word” in my job letters guaranteed to catch the eye of picky search committee members.
so even historical monsters have their human side.
but seriously here i must plug an absolutely brilliant film about the end of the war and Germany’s fate: Germany Year Zero by Rossellini which jettisons much of the melodrama of Open City and tells a very simple heartbreaking story in the midst of Berlin’s actual ruins. When the homeless play an old record of Hitler’s speeches the effect is chilling. I don’t know of a better film that mixes documentary and narrative.
oh and by the way, why does Hitler’s secretary get a pass–because she’s a cute old german lady?…fuck that. she should have been tried at Nuremberg…just because all you’re doing is writing memos and sorting the paper clips doesn’t mean you haven’t got a hand in the genocide. I mean who the hell did she think she was working for, Santa Claus? I mean when I had the opportunity to be Eichmann’s valet, I turned the offer down flat. Let him steam his own damn sports jackets, Nazi scum!
Ahh, the “secret word” in the job letter. Tell us Mike, was it “smuggle”? And when someone said it, did a duck come down and give away $100?
no, it was “Blitzkrieg” something very difficult to work into the letters–usually I tried something like “As a scholar teaching and working in your department, I plan to initiate a veritable blitzkrieg of scholarly production. Each peer-reviewed essay a veritable Stuka strafing with brilliance the power brokers of the academic world like so many hapless Poles…”