Downfall; The Movie

[Anoetos]

I have no idea where this goes, so feel free to move it:

I just rented and watched it.

Bruno Ganz is a GREAT actor. He played Staupitz in the recent "Luther" movie.

This was a very important movie for a number of reasons:

It was made, written, directed and performed by Germans with a German cast. The nearly pathological German fear of dealing honestly with the Third Reich has been documented and ridiculed by a number of German artists and thinkers and is frankly a fact of German psychological life even today, so the making of this film is, if not precisely courageous, at least brazen.

It humanizes Hitler, refusing to portray him as a devil with horns and pitchfork. Hitler, when in 'Führer-mode' is, clearly, angrily insane, and yet, in his dealings with Traudl and Eva he is gentle, softspoken and mild, like a sweet old grandfather. This has the effect of making the whole experience even more chilling.

It shows very vividly the delusional state of Hitler and Goebbels at the end. The scene with Frau Goebbels and the children is, well...words fail me. She was "a good German" i.e. a German who did what she believed had to be done, what she had been told to do (lest there be any misunderstanding, I think this kind of 'relentlessness' both wicked and quite mad).

It doesn't let the German people off the hook, it, almost stereotypically, portrays them as a nation of people willing to obey anyone in a uniform. Goebbels at one point tells us that the German people are only getting exactly what they signed up for.

A brilliant, superbly written and marvellously acted film.

///

I am currently reading James Carroll's book "Constantine's Sword", which purports to be a history of Christian anti-semitism but seems so far to be Carroll's own apology to the Jews for the New Testament.

Anyhow, watching "Downfall" it occurred to me that while direct culpability for the death of Christ was shared by a certain small number of Jews as well as Romans, in a very real sense the majority of German civilian citizens morally underwrote the Nazi rise to power and the whole platform of that regime.

It may or may not have been that they (Das Deutsche Volk) did not know about "The Final Solution", but, regardless, Carroll is right about one thing in his book: even if they had known it seems unlikely that it would have made much difference.

[spiritmech]

The actual German word for the title is "Untergang" which is a pretty connotative word (via Nietzsche, probably others in German literary scene) but also hearkens back to Dante's Inferno (going down into hell) and Ulysses's trip down into hell.

I wonder if Luther uses this word in his works, I'm really not sure. Maybe Goethe uses it in Faust? I'm not sure.
sm

[Anoetos]

Great point, as a German speaker I can tell you that the word has a pretty serious connotation lost in translation. It means, or carries the meaning of 'going to hell', and not in any silly, profane sense either.

Untergang means, literally "going under" as in going under the earth, underground, into the hole. The same word would be used of a sinking ship.

[NeilUnreal]

Bruno Ganz is a awesome.

-Neil

[spiritmech]

I think it's interesting that the moviemaker chose the title. It makes me want to see the movie. Does is go surrealistic towards the end? How exactly does it try to get across a "hellish" meaning?
sm

Great point, as a German speaker I can tell you that the word has a pretty serious connotation lost in translation. It means, or carries the meaning of 'going to hell', and not in any silly, profane sense either.

Untergang means, literally "going under" as in going under the earth, underground, into the hole. The same word would be used of a sinking ship.