Downfall

Make no mistake. Hitler worship continues amongst us unabated – SBS alone would lose half its documentary programming if shows about Hitler and the Nazis were suddenly ordered off the air. Most of these are dressed up as historical studies of fanatics and a country gone hopelessly astray, but the reality is the Nazis wore good costumes and were destined to make irredeemably good baddies, from the war years through Raiders of the Lost Ark to present day Sith reincarnations.

This mythologising ambivalence hangs heavily over shows attempting real insight into the Nazi mindset, and most particularly, the madness of Adolf Hitler, and so it is with Downfall, which comes across in much of its staging as a moody, atmospheric dramatised documentary.

The story is relatively cribbed and confined. By late April 1945, the Nazi dream of a thousand year empire was well and truly over, but the rats were having a hard time coming to terms with loss of champagne, art works, and most importantly functioning armies. Hitler had retreated to his underground bunker, wherein he would have his last birthday party. By then, the legendary madman had truly dropped the twig, and he and his team were coming to terms with their ultimate fate – suicide, a slower death or imprisonment in the hands of the Russians (or via the Nuremburg trials), or flight and maybe survival in South America.

Downfall is told through the eyes of a minor functionary – Adolph Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge (here played by Alexandra Maria Lara) who did manage to survive her stay in the mad bunker, and who received better treatment from the Allies than functionaries like Bin Laden’s driver has received in recent post war deals.

The story doesn’t follow her exclusively – director Oliver Hirschbiegel includes scenes from above the bunkers as doctors desperately try to patch up victims of the fighting, and German generals try to organise a rearguard action, and mad fascists patrol the streets hanging anyone they suspect of collaborating with the Russians.

But the real action is in the bunker, and apart from the general drunken mayhem of the despairing staff, the proceeding are dominated by Bruno Ganz’s  portrait of Hitler in fatal decline, hands twitching, mouth foaming, ranting at betrayal and cowardice and showing a steely resolve to see as many Germans as possible accompany him to hell.

Juliane Köhlera provides a neat portrait of Eva Braun as resolute blonde bubble headed bimbo companion, standing by her man, determined to party down, and finally nail her man and her place in history before chomping on the cyanide pills favoured by the Bunker folk.

There’s also a detailed and lengthy portrait of Magda Goebbels (German mother of the year) taking out her children before she and her husband Joseph take themselves out. Corinna Harfouch is very good in the role, while Ulrich Matthes contributes a swarthy presence as the fanatically loyal Goebbels. The scene where Magda force feds her children the cyanide pills is something to see.

The story will be familiar to all bunker fetishists – Traudl Junge turned up as long ago as The World At War documentary series (there’s a full length documentary on the last days of Hitler in the five disc DVD release) and more recently there’s been a feature length documentary interview with her released on DVD, but be warned that this is actually some ninety minutes of her as an unrelieved talking head (the main visual is in fact her changes of clothes between shoots)..

The real Junge starts Downfall’s tale of woe with a voice over, and then turns up at the end to regret her stupidity and to suggest that being young is no excuse for being ill informed (a judgement that would see many Australians locked up for the criminal collaboration with American imperialists in installing a puppet regime in Iraq. Hang on, only joking, we’re teaching them the benefits of democracy and suicide bombing).

But what is in essence a dramatised documentary stumbles in places in terms of coverage and staging, bound down by German guilt and the desire for some balance when confronted with the death of the Nazi regime.

For a start, there’s a rather saintly and rational doctor who hangs around the bunker a little, but spends most of the time topside dealing with the wounded and trying to help out, articulating a little rationality when confronted with general insanity and a desire to keep fighting.

More surprising, while director Hirschbiegel dwells in loving detail on the death of Goebbels’ family, he avoids showing the deaths of Hitler and Braun, as if in a way seeking to preserve the mythology that they might not have died but might still be lingering somewhere in Brazil.

It’s roughly the equivalent of a desire not to show the face of Christ (or Allah) in some icons, and it can’t be excused by saying that it’s because there were no witnesses to the deaths –  Hirschbiegel happily shows the deaths of the Goebbels’ family, conducted by the best mother in Germany, as she shoves vials between teeth, and closes them to send the poison into her spawn. This eyewitness then terminates herself without leaving any note to history – unlike Hitler and a few other of the sociopaths.

No, there are stranger tensions at play in some of the coverage, a combination of ongoing German fascination with the Nazi regime, and disgust at its excesses, and some of the more expository dialogue explores these tensions in a way which suggests some redemptive possibilities for the German people. The trouble of course is that in their own bizarre ways the Nazis were all too human, and objectifying their evil is the easy way out.

Along with the brooding decline of Adolf in his bunker – which he refuses to flee - there’s some nice top side action, and the coverage is generally good, with lighting inclined to an almost sepia toned bleak, desaturated and grainy realism.

Performances in an extensive set of minor roles covering many of the attendant lords and minions are also generally solid, but Ganz dominates, and unfortunately the show tends to lose its edge once he’s given a blazing Viking funeral outside the bunker entrance.

If you are interested in the truth and mythology of the bunker, the result is well worth a viewing – the minor characters, such as Speer, are given reasonably accurate ,lookalike performers, and the result has something of the gritty air of a murderous Macbeth about its portrait of the final frenzy of accountability and descent into madness.

Unfortunately the subtitles are not well done (names lose vowels in inexplicable shortenings), the transfer has flaws, and the one extra is just some third camera coverage of filming. There are an abundance of trailers for shows like Peaches on the dvd, which also count as a strike against the packaging, but at least they’re not forced, like the wretched anti piracy ads run by Fox and Sony. (Did I mention my resolve never to buy another piece of Sony hardware until they divest their software division – Adolf’s not the only one to be mad as hell and determined not to take it any more).

 

 hi im sara i have a crush on josh he is sooooooooooooo hot well thats all foks bye bye

sara, February 17, 2006 11:18

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