Downfall (2004)

Downfall (Der Untergang) caused a stir in Germany on its release due to want was seen as humanising the Nazis. This in fact the films greatest strength. It shows that rather than being the one- dimensional villains of so many US productions the Nazis were just human beings like the rest of us, just corrupted by power and ethnic hatred. Credit goes to director Oliver Hirschbiegel for his claustrophobic direction and leading lady Alexandra Maria Lara for her realistic and sympathetic performance acting as the window through which we see the madness of the Third Reich’s last fight. However. the lynch-pin of the film is Bruno Ganz's demented, screaming, moving, all-or-nothing performance as Hitler himself. Shouting himself hoarse one minute and crying like a little girl the next he makes you sympathise for Hitler in the way you feel for a rabid dog. The scene that illuminates the German peoples blind devotion the most is Hitler's deputy Goebbels and his wife brutally killing their six children with cyanide pills, an event that actually happened. The eldest girl knows that something is wrong but does nothing. This shows what a powerful idea or personality can do not just to people but whole nations and that good people have duty to stop that, a similar situation could be developing in the Middle East between Jews and Muslims there. History tends to repeat itself. A brave and brilliant film that captures the madness, hypocrisy and the small lights of hope that define WW2 and cautions us not to allow a repeat of it or anything like it. As Edmund Burke said "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one".