DOWNFALL (2004) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Juliane Köhler,
Ulrich Matthes, Corinna Harfouch, Heino Ferch,
Christian Berkel, Matthias Habich, Thomas Kretschmann
The last days of the Third Reich, with Bruno Ganz as the ranting, disintegrating Führer. It's hard to play Hitler without slipping into caricature, but Ganz inhabits the role in a way that's truly frightening. You wonder how he did it without scaring himself. At the same time, the movie's concerned with much more than the dictator's fate. As the Red Army closes in and Hitler disengages from reality, the others in and around the bunker must choose: life or death, loyalty or escape, suicide or surrender to the dreaded Russians. This is what the end of a war looks like from the losing side, and as grim as it sounds (and often is), there's a moral struggle going on, too, and in that there are moments of genuine heroism, a suggestion that even among the damned, there's a glimmer of humanity.
Bruno Ganz
(1941-2019)
