liadnan

I've just been to see The Downfall/Der Untergang with Steph.

I genuinely found it staggeringly good. Those who criticise it for making Hitler and his inner circle seem human seem to me to be utterly missing the point. That is the point, that they weren't aliens from the planet Zog. Like it or not, the message is, ordinary humans are capable of extraordinary evil - and then of being very kind to their secretaries. And that the secretaries, like Traudl Junge, on whose book the film is partly based and from whose point of view it is told, can, as she effectively admitted in an interview made shortly before her death in 2002 shown at the end of the film, close their eyes to it. She says for many years she felt detached from it all, that it was nothing to do with her. And then, at a memorial to a White Rose girl of her own age, killed around the time she was being interviewed for her job by Hitler at Wolf's Lair, she says she realised - she could have found out what was really happening. If she had wanted to do so.

Beautifully shot, and a convincing portrayal of a city under siege. The characters are brilliantly played, so friendly and kind from her point of view (with the exception of Goebbels, where they seem to have given up and decided to portray him as pretty much insane throughout). Most of the film takes place in the last week of Hitler's life, with Traudl awaking in the bunker to realise "those aren't bombs. That's artillery." Eva Braun, desparately trying to believe everything is going to be fine. Hitler himself, one moment the kindly grandfather, the next accusing everyone of treachery, ordering divisions that no longer effectively existed to move on Berlin and contemplating how they're going to recapture oilfields after they've dealt with all this. Frau Goebbels, devastated at Hitler's decision to die, and then calmly, efficiently, executing each of her children rather than let them live in a world without National Socialism. That rather pleasant plump bloke, who's he.... oh, you realise in the titles, that was Bormann. Speer, an enigma in the film as he is, to me at least, in reality. Hitler's personal SS detachment, resolving to fight to the last bullet. So brave, you think, and then you think again.

And that's the thing about the film - it can only make its point against the background of what you know about these people. But surely its right: if Hitler and his inner circle were somehow other, then how could there be a lesson for us worth remembering?

One odd historical point I didn't know, but assume wasn't made up. Himmler, early on, mentions secret negotiations with Eisenhower with the aim of a managed peace, and others in the bunker raise the same idea later. I can see why the Americans and British would have been interested - they were already thinking ahead and worrying about Stalin - but I'd have thought by then it would be far too late.