Downfall

Ever wonder where those "Angry Hitler" clips came from? If you're not in the know, it's from a 2004 German movie called "The Downfall," chronicling the last few days of Hitler and the Third Reich.

It's 1945, and the Red Army has surrounded Berlin. The Allies are closing in as well, and the German Army is close to total defeat. Inside the fuhrerbunker, Adolf Hitler enacts Operation Clausewitz, making Berlin a frontline city. Many, including civilians and military personnel, evacuate the city as it is laid to ruin. Hitler himself, however, opts to stay and make his last stand here. And wary of what happened to his ally Mussolini, he begins to consider suicide.

The movie was constructed from interviews and accounts of people inside the bunker and published accounts of Hitler's last days. Indeed, the film itself is viewed through the perspective of Hitler's last secretary, Traudl Junge, who appears before and after the film an interview segment. The movie also speculates on a number of unclear events: who killed the Goebbels children, when Hitler wrote his last will and testament, how Magda Goebbels was killed, and so on.

The acting by Bruno Ganz deserves note. His performance as the fuhrer himself, switching between gentlemanly and incandescent rage, is spellbinding. Yet portraying Hitler is a human rather than this vague icon of evil does not make him any less evil; his rants about racial purity and his indifference to the German people as they faced annihilation make it clear that despite his situation, this is still the same despicable man hated by many.

The film is appropriately filled with a sense of dread. In the chaos of the invasion, people either hide in fear or celebrate in parties. But the sound of the Russian artillery is always there, a reminder and a harbinger of the destruction that will befall them. This is, after all a story about defeat; about the end of a horrible regime that consumed the world in flames. It also offers us a little glimpse into who these people were.