"Downfall"
"Downfall" |
During the last days of the Third Reich, its notorious leader was confined to his claustrophobic bunker under Berlin like a caged, restless animal, his destiny laid out in the ruins above. Downfall, the movie directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and based on first-hand accounts of the fateful days published by Hitler’s private secretary Traudl Junge, places the audience right in the last bastion of Nazi delirium.
With the Soviet Army moving in for the last major battle to topple the Nazi regime, Hitler and his entourage were still planning a counter offensive against the unstoppable Allied forces. The ever nearing gunfire, however, spelled out doom for Hitler’s crazed dream of world domination and eventually saw the man end his own life.
Swiss-born actor Bruno Ganz turned in a tour de force performance, bringing to life a Hitler tormented by the prospects of defeat and losing his by then tenuous grip on reality and reason. That said, a cardboard raving mad character Ganz’s Hitler is not. With a highly nuanced and empathetic approach that stayed carefully clear of caricaturizing or parodying Hitler, Ganz instilled some well-weighted humanness into a figure that is known world over as a blood-thirsty megalomaniac. As a consequence, Downfall is one of the more authentic and thoughtful attempts to present the last days of the “Thousand-Year Reich” from a less judgmental point of view.
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