Has anybody seen the movie "Downfall"?
Cabra West
17-05-2005, 08:53
Has anybody seen the movie "Downfall"?
I saw it a few days ago and I have to say, I cannot remember the last time a movie impressed me this much....
http://www.tribute.ca/synopsis.asp?m_id=10011
Pure Metal
17-05-2005, 08:57
thats good news - i've been wanting to see this for some time now
Cabra West
17-05-2005, 09:05
You might be in for a surprise.... I sure was. I knew what the movie was about and although I'm not an expert I've always been interessted in this part of Germany's past, but the movie is taking a really new approach.
If you are from Germany, you might remember a series of documentaries called "Hitlers Helfer"? Some of the ideas of this documantary are taken up in the movie.
Hitler is the leading character, but you get to see the people around him as well... and you don't get to see them as flat, order-shouting, cloned Nazis but as human beings.
That's the one aspect I always wondered about... they were just normal people, all of them. How did they manage to comitt all these artrocities? How did they go home to their kids and look them in the eyes?
The movie does answer some of these questions, while at the same time asking new ones
Cannot think of a name
17-05-2005, 09:48
It's supposed to be told from the secretaries point of view. While they do show a 'human' side to Hitler you in no way feel any better about him because he was nice to his secretary or loved his dog. He is still a beast, even in this movie-just not a caracature. You don't watch the movie neccisarily feeling sorry for Hitler but rather sorry that it all came to this.
I was slammed by one of the moments when an aid is trying to convince Goebbels to evacuate Berlin because they fear that the Russians are going to tear the city apart. He tells Goebbels that they will be slaughtered, Goebbels says (I have to paraphrase because it's been a while now), "And I have no sympathy. None. We did not force this on the German people, they gave us a mandate and now they will pay the price." Something to that effect. Kinda got uncomfortable for a moment there...
Cabra West
17-05-2005, 10:16
No, you don't feel better about him in any way, of course not.
But before that, Nazis were represented in most movies as deranged, psycopathic maniacs, which made it really easy to accept them as "just bad people". That still left me wondering about my grandfathers...
I have no clue what they did exactly during this time, neither of them was ever willing to talk about it. But I couldn't help wondering. Whatever it was, it was nothing they were proud of by the time I was born. They came home from the war, married, raised children, all the time living with the memory of the war, with the guilt and shame (at least that is what I imagine) but never admitting it, never speaking about it. HOW did they do that? And why?
Cannot think of a name
17-05-2005, 10:24
No, you don't feel better about him in any way, of course not.
But before that, Nazis were represented in most movies as deranged, psycopathic maniacs, which made it really easy to accept them as "just bad people". That still left me wondering about my grandfathers...
I have no clue what they did exactly during this time, neither of them was ever willing to talk about it. But I couldn't help wondering. Whatever it was, it was nothing they were proud of by the time I was born. They came home from the war, married, raised children, all the time living with the memory of the war, with the guilt and shame (at least that is what I imagine) but never admitting it, never speaking about it. HOW did they do that? And why?
I'm actually intrigued by that. How does a nation deal with that (I might find out, unfortunately...but thats another four dozen threads...). German cinema before the Oberhaussen(sp) summit dealt with it by going back to pre-WWI era forms and stories. Unfortunately thats about it for what I know, just how the cinema reacted.
Downfall was a very compelling film.