Harrowing account of Hitler’s final days in the Berlin bunker at the end of World War II. It’s presented from the perspective of his young secretary – one of the few people in his inner circle who survived, and whose account we are expected to trust.
There’s an appropriately depressing green/grey bleakness to the visuals, and the story is even bleaker. There are many suicides and you also witness a mother poisoning her children. In many ways I regret watching it, however brilliantly it was made.
There’s plenty of moral ambiguity, too. Hitler and his inner circle are humanised (which for many, I’m sure, was controversial), but the film struggles with the same problem as any work of art that tackles these events – how to make sense of something that simply makes no sense.
Bruno Ganz is all too believable as Hitler. Alexandra Maria Lara is perfect as the wide-eyed young Traudl Junge, who ends up working for him. Downfall cannot resolve the moral ambiguity of her seeming to be an innocent who didn’t know what was going on. That's difficult to believe. I’m also not sure it was a wise artistic decision to bookend the film with footage of the real-life Junge talking about what happened. A documentary might have been more successful than this slightly awkward mixture of a reimagining and actual interview footage.
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