Downfall

Traudl Junge (Lara), the final stenographer for Adolf Hitler (Ganz), tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.

More details:
The last ten days of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime are seen through the eyes of a young woman in his employ in this historical drama from Germany. Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) was 22 years old when, in the fall of 1942, she was hired to be personal secretary to Adolph Hitler (Bruno Ganz). In April of 1945, Junge was still working for Hitler as Allied forces were bearing down on Germany and the leader retreated to a secret bunker in Berlin for what would prove to be the last ten days of his life, as well as that of the Third Reich. As Hitler's mistress Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler) attempts to throw a cheerful birthday party for her man, Hitler's closest associates, including Heinrich Himmler (Ulrich Noethen), Josef Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes), and Albert Speer (Heino Ferch), urge him to flee the city with only Goebbels maintaining any illusions that the Third Reich has any hope of survival. Hitler refuses to leave Berlin, and he spends his final days ranting and raving to Junge, blaming all around him as he tries to understand where his leadership went wrong. Meanwhile, Goebbels and his wife round up their six children and bring them to the bunker as Berlin begins to topple, determined to take their lives rather than face the Allies after Germany's certain defeat. Der Untergang (aka The Downfall) was based in part on the memoirs of the real-life Traudl Junge, whose experiences also formed the basis of the 2002 documentary Im Toten Winkel: Hitlers Sekretarin (aka Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary). — Mark Deming

Review:
Any honest effort to fictionalize Adolf Hitler is bound to encounter criticism, because it is impossible to dramatize any aspect of his life without portraying him as, essentially, a human being. Even a film like Olivier Hirschbiegel's Downfall, which portrays Hitler's grim last days and makes it clear that he was mad, is criticized because it shows him in a few lighter moments. How can the beast who slaughtered innocent millions have been capable of gently mussing a young boy's hair or putting a nervous secretary at ease with a joke? But Hirschbiegel and screenwriter/producer Bernd Eichinger understand that evil does not exist in a vacuum and that part of what makes Hitler and Nazi Germany so unfathomable is that the worst of them were still human, and that the state was kept running by essentially normal people. The film is compelling to the extent that it makes clear that true believers like Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes of Winter Sleepers) and Hitler (Bruno Ganz) may have singled out the Jews, but eventually their contempt spread to all of humanity, including, tellingly, their own people. "They gave us our mandate," says Goebbels, expressing no sympathy for the ordinary Berliners being slaughtered because Hitler refuses to surrender. By Hitler's twisted standard, meanwhile, it's the German people who have failed him. The film as a whole, however, is rather slow and scattered, showing clear signs that it was cobbled together from a multitude of historical sources. Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) certainly has an interesting story (already told in the documentary, Hitler's Secretary), but the filmmakers offer little insight into why such people allowed themselves to be caught up in the madness. Downfall succeeds, for the most part, in painstakingly depicting who did what when, but beyond that, it is a missed opportunity. — Josh Ralske