BuzzFlash Reviews

July 2005

Downfall: The Last Days Inside Hitler's Bunker (DVD)

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote a seminal book on the rise of Nazism called "The Banality of Evil." One of her basic premises is that evil doesn't appear in some monstrous Satanic battle, such as in Milton's "Paradise Lost," but rather is the byproduct of historical developments that are made up of a compilation of mundane events and personal choices that together lead to evil outcomes.

Hitler was a psychotic megalomaniac who viewed himself as the savior of the Aryan race. He was an odd candidate. He was a rather unattractive, dark-haired, short man, allegedly with only one testicle -- hardly anyone's Aryan fantasy. But he knew how to utilize scapegoating, lies, the suspension of civil liberties, mass extermination, torture, and war to seduce a German people who felt humiliated by the loss of World War I and the failure of the Weimar Republic.

Above all, Hitler was a master demagogue who played the emotional heart strings of the German people like a prodigal violinist. He promised them a nation that would ascend to the firmament after it purified itself of "human pollution" (in the form of Jews, gypsies, gays and dissenting Catholics, among others.) While he pursued his unobtainable "Aryan perfection," his brown shirts silenced all dissent through thuggish tactics, brutal murder, and forced seizure of power (through the Reichstag fire, among other tactics).

Which brings BuzzFlash to the riveting film "Downfall," which details Hitler's last few days in his Berlin bunker, before the Soviet forces completely seized Berlin. When we saw "Downfall" in a move theater, we expected to be repelled. Instead we were mesmerized by the astoundingly powerful performance of Bruno Ganz as Hitler and Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun and the revoltingly unsettling Joseph and Magda Goebbels, who committed unspeakable acts in the name of an unattainable pathological goal.

Filmed in the claustrophobic bunker and based on historically accurate accounts, "Downfall" is powerfully intense in its depiction of how monstrous historical movements are set in motion by fatally flawed people who are allowed absolute powers over life and death.

"Downfall" represents the final hours of a nightmare that Europe experienced for far too many years. It emphasizes subtleties of character and personal interaction as the Third Reich disintegrates, within the confines of the infamous bunker (and occasional cinematic excursions into a crumbling Berlin, temporarily ruled by Hitler "assassination squads.")

This is a devastatingly provocative and engrossing film.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS