The drama drags on during Hitler's last days
As Russian artillery kabooms on Berlin and inner-circle Nazis assemble in a fortified underground complex, Joseph Goebbels' wife ushers her towheaded brood into an SS-guarded parlor beneath the German chancellory to say hello to "Uncle Hitler" and sing him a song. This bizarre little scene - a glimpse of misguided fealty that crosses the boundary into cultlike obsession - comes about midway through Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, an inside-the-bunker look at the last days, and paranoid rants, of the architect of the Third Reich.
As Russian artillery kabooms on Berlin and inner-circle Nazis assemble in a fortified underground complex, Joseph Goebbels' wife ushers her towheaded brood into an SS-guarded parlor beneath the German chancellory to say hello to "Uncle Hitler" and sing him a song.
This bizarre little scene - a glimpse of misguided fealty that crosses the boundary into cultlike obsession - comes about midway through Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall, an inside-the-bunker look at the last days, and paranoid rants, of the architect of the Third Reich.
Set during a 12-day-span in April 1945, as Hitler's armies are crumbling around him, and starring Bruno Ganz as der Führer, Downfall is both a fascinating portrait of denial and dementia, and a bit of a snooze. Stooped over, his left hand aquiver with nervous spasms, Ganz plays Hitler as an unknowable figure with tender gestures reserved for his loyal secretary (Alexandra Maria Lara) and icy edicts for his retreating generals. As for the citizens of Berlin, now in jeopardy for their lives, well, Hitler has only disdain. He will never surrender. His philosophy is one of Darwinian fatalism: It's survival of the fittest, and the weak (not to mention the young, the old, the women and the infirm) will get what they deserve.
A foreign-language Oscar nominee, Downfall has the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy, and all the essential components therein: loyalty and betrayal, conspiracy and delusion, self-destruction. Perhaps it's impossible to view the Nazi dictator who exterminated millions as a mere mortal, and not a satanic madman. But Downfall fails - and falls into its predictable paces - for other, less profound reasons: The filmmakers' mix of history and conjecture doesn't add up to anything more than reenactment.
Scenes of urban combat (Nazi youth shouldering Panzerfausts as Red Army tanks roll through the streets) and regimental collapse are intercut with long-winded war-room diatribes: Hitler barking out impossible orders, accusing his grim, medal-festooned military counsel of cowardice and incompetence.
A brief respite from bombardment allows Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler) and two of Hitler's female stenographers to smoke cigarettes and smell flowers in the garden above the bunker. Then the cannon fire, the spittle-ing speeches - and the worried looks of officers fighting conflicting impulses of allegiance and self-preservation - begin again.
If Ganz's performance is one-note, it is also charismatic. The actor imbues his Hitler with a palpable, paradoxical sense of magnetism and madness. The parade of thespians trooping past the star is rife with familiar faces from contemporary German cinema. The production values are solid.
And the end - after 2 1/2 hours - can't come soon enough.
Contact movie critic Steven Rea
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Downfall ** 1/2 (out of four stars)
Produced and written by Bernd Eichinger, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, photography by Rainer Klausmann, music by Stephan Zacharias, distributed by Newmarket Films. In German with subtitles.
Running time: 2 hours, 28 mins.
Adolf Hitler. . . Bruno Ganz
Traudl Junge. . . Alexandra Maria Lara
Joseph Goebbels. . . Ulrich Matthes
Eva Braun. . . Juliane Köhler
Albert Speer. . . Heino Ferch
Parent's guide: R (violence, nudity, profanity, adult themes)
Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse and Ritz Sixteen/NJ