Sympathy for the Devil

Earlier this week, I watched an excellent flick called Downfall. Released in 2004, and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2005, it tells the story of the last days of the Third Reich from within Hitler's bunker. It gained notoriety in Germany for being the first film made there in decades in which an actor portrayed Hitler (as opposed to using newsreel footage, for example). That actor, Austrian Bruno Ganz, delivers an amazing performance, bringing fully to life one of history's great monsters. Really, it's matched only by Ulrich Matthes's uber-creepy portrayal of Hitler henchman Joseph Goebbels.*

It being a movie about Hitler, there's also the question of whether comes off too sympathetically in the end. To be sure, the narrow focus of the film precludes extensive discussion of Hitler's reign. With the exception of a brief scene in 1942 (and bookend documentary interviews with Hitler's secretary), the film takes place entirely between Hitler's birthday on April 20, 1945 and the surrender of German forces to the Soviets on May 2. But the portrayal of Hitler in the film doesn't leave a lot of doubt that he's anything other than a psychotic killer.

While the events of the Holocaust aren't specifically depicted or mentioned, for example, Hitler's musing that history will remember him fondly for dealing with the Jews leaves little doubt of his thoughts. As the military situation collapses around him and the Soviets grind on towards the bunker, Hitler rants and rages about how his generals and soldiers are worthless betrayers and repeatedly brushes off concerns for the plight of ordinary Germans as deserving their fate. I tend to agree with what Roger Ebert said in his review in responding to, among others, this piece in the New Yorker:

Admiration I did not feel. Sympathy I felt in the sense that I would feel it for a rabid dog, while accepting that it must be destroyed. I do not feel the film provides "a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did," because I feel no film can, and no response would be sufficient. All we can learn from a film like this is that millions of people can be led, and millions more killed, by madness leashed to racism and the barbaric instincts of tribalism.

What sympathy is generated for Hitler comes from portraying his complete detachment from reality. The war, clearly, is lost by the time Hitler's birthday comes around. Members of his inner circle are pleading with him to follow them out of Berlin. Artillery shells thunder outside the bunker and the nearby Chancellery building. The distance of the Soviets from the center of Berlin is measured in meters, not kilometers. Still, Hitler futilely consults his maps, moving units around that either have ceased to exist or are barely capable of retreating, much less counterattacking. At one point, he fawns over Albert Speer's scale model version of a reconstructed Berlin, musing that, in essence, the city must be destroyed in order to be rebuilt in greatness (indeed, a chorus of "Best of All Possible Worlds" from Candide wouldn't be out of place).

In the end, I think the filmmakers intend their audiences to be fairly smart about the movie. It's goal is not to provide a comprehensive overview of Hitler's life and times, but a depiction of a specific time and place. I'm reminded of some of the IMDB comments to The Motorcycle Diaries, which criticize the film for not showing the violent authoritarian Guevara would become. They miss the point. A movie isn't responsible for anything beyond it's own metes and bounds. It's not required to be a full-blooded educational tool, if that's not what the filmmakers want it to be.

Judged on its own merits, as historical drama, as a war film, and as a psychological study of several days at the end of an historical era, Downfall is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

* Still, every time he came on screen, I heard Timmy from South Park calling after his pet turkey!