andaroo? Renting The Longest Yard?!

I *might* take it off, because I will likely see it on Starz. But although I do not really waste my theater money on this type of stuff, it may make for an entertaining Saturday afternoon sometime. And it's a big movie and I always get around to seeing "the big movies".

My only beef with it, and this is rare among motion pictures, is the world is almost not ready to explore the emotional landscape of the German side. I think people are afraid of looking into it. And it's sad, because people should be able to, and something that people will be able to do, but it's too current still, and I think people feel like they are cheating on the memory of the Holocaust victims if they focus any attention on the Germans.

That leads us into complicated discussions about sympathizing with Germans and Nazis and... critisism which doesn't help the film in my view. It needs an audience that is *beyond* those issues.

I think there are many different genres within European based World War II Films.

Among these genres are:

There is of course German and American Propoganda... Triumph of the Will type of a thing.

There are the heart tuggers... Shindler's List, The Pianist, Diary of Anne Frank... they all exist to remember the loss and heroism of the Jews/etc. and the Germans/Polish/etc. who existed in the camps or outside hiding from the Nazis. Schindler's List will forever go down as a movie which pretty much encapsulates the emotional feeling of the death of vast scores of people. The Pianist is a much more personal story and approaches the subject more like Diary of Anne Frank does. I find it hard to compare them.

Then there is the American perspective... which is a lot of 50s movies and most especially, the king of all these, Saving Private Ryan. I really love Saving Private Ryan for what it represents and tries to do, even if it isn't accurate, it I think strikes a nice balance in what it's trying to say about the American soldiers. Enemy at the Gates and World War II "action" movies also sort of fit here.

Then there is hard history from the German side. Which I think is a relatively new thing and is incredibly challenging. The film Max also can kind of be put here (although it's not that good!).

I think all of these "genres" are valid to some extent and add to the tapestry of World War II history.

C'mon people, everyone go out and rent Downfall! It's already standing at #60 at IMDB, ahead of Million Dollar Baby, Sin City, Kill Bill and many others!

I'm finally seeing it today or tomorrow. And only because of the Doctor.

Ok I finally saw Der Untergang this evening. Let me start by saying I by no means know a lot about German political history, or the second world war. It was covered in my schooling but that was some time ago now! So I may well be missing obvious points, I only remember the basics so please forgive me.

It is difficult to separate a film like this, to view it simply as a film and ignore the historical/factual side isn’t easy, which makes giving it a grade very difficult. Looking at it purely as a piece of cinema I thought it was very well acted, the portrayal of Hitler was better than I had expected as the opening scenes were worryingly ‘awkward’ not quite overacted, but at times it came close. Thankfully it didn’t continue past the opening scenes. Some of the imagery at the beginning was very good, stylised. Something which I think it lost towards the end of the film, although that may have been the point, that everything was in ‘downfall’ and there was no order. I do think the film stalled at Hitlers death (which I’ll come to soon), it lost its flow a little and seemed for the first time to drag slightly. I felt like the film didn’t quite know where it wanted to go or what it wanted to be after that point. Purely as a film I ‘enjoyed’ it, if you can use that word to describe such a film.

However, there were a couple of things that really made me quite angry. I wish the filmmakers had had the courage to show Hitlers’ death. I can understand why they didn’t as his death wasn’t actually witnessed (as far as I am aware), but I felt somehow let down by it being ‘covered up’ slightly. The scene with Goebbels killing the children in their sleep didn’t sit quite right either, neither did their suicides. Once again, having seen many other suicides we were treated with kid gloves to the pan away and BANG system. I wanted to see the result of where there actions had taken them to, I wanted closure on that part of the story and felt let down again by a lack of courage to show it.

That said the story was powerful, and the large budget evident. I can’t really comment on any historical inaccuracies as these would have just gone over my head. Overall I think it verged on being a very good film, but floundered towards the end and missed the mark. I gave it a B- but that is subject to change when I’ve thought about it some more.

I'll have it at home but I just don't come around seeing it. :?

The Doc pointed out the thread to me and since it's in my top 100 of all time adding an opinion wouldn't hurt

I'm going to come straight out and say this is the type of film that should be mandatory viewing in History classrooms. For every other facate of World War 2 be it Russian Front brutality (Come and See) the changes the journey of war has on the pychice (The Big Red One: The Reconstruction) all the way to the horrors of the Holocaust (Schindlers List) their stories are covered superbly and vividly, their tales a fitting companion to the written history we can all absorb.

But it wasn't until Downfall that the story of the end of the nightmarish dream that was the Third Reich was given a suitable visual backup to the written accounts that abound from the last days of Berlin. And more importently It does what no other movie until then had the balls to do, and that is give a truly accurate portrayal of Hitler not as a pantomine monster but as a real flesh and blood human being, something which makes his actions infinatly more sinister and evil.

Watching this movie is almost like observing a person suffering the withdrawal symptoms of an hellucinagenic drug. The Russians are closing in the end beckons and yet the crazy air of "we can still win" hangs in the mind of Hitler and his Leuteneints. He commands imaginery Armies, plans for future campaigns that will never come to pass, it acts as the answer to the question of why Hitler brought it all the way to the brutal end, why for him a repeat of the capitulation of 1918 was never an option. This answer could always be found in the textbooks but it truly is heartening to see it represented on film simply because the in todays age its a fact that its more likely to be see by more this way. The scenes which deal with his military fantasy are among the most mesmerising. We see the bellowing crazed Hitler the man seen in those black and white newsreels of the day, but its the change in character in these scenes that makes them such interesting viewing. The change in attitude from a calm almost docile Fuhrer to what at some points seems like a raving maniac. A pantomine monster can be fobbed off as an abboration from History. But this reminds us that Hitler was human and there is no gaurantee another of his ilk will not rise angain.

Bruno Ganz truly cannot be praised enough for his performance. Everything from the tone of voice, the hunched stance to the quivering arm is scarely accurate. He becomes Hitler right in front of you, its sometimes hard to believe its a actor playing a role its that convincing.

Its a movie that also examines the role of the German people themselves brilliantly. The various characters from Alexandra Maria Lara's Traudl Junge to Christian Berkels Dr. Ernst-Günter Schenck all the way to Ulrich Matthes Joseph Goebbels all act in a way as cyphers of the various states of mind the German people must have felt in 1945. Junge is the naive youth that has been lead to the slaughter by a man that has dominated their lifes and even at the end they refuse to beleive the truth of Hitlers evil, fighting on for a cause long lost, Schenck stands as the older wiser head, the German who's wisdom of the past leave him cold and realising of reality, the Germans that in a way resisted the Nazi's but got dragged along in the euphoric insanity of it all unable to stop. And Goebbels stands as the Germans of 1945 who in the end were beyond redemption, there belief in the cause absolute their humanity long since stripped away. For them this truly is the end of a macabre dream.

Downfall is the endgame of Hitler writ large on screen, but its even more then that. Its the violence and self destructive suicide of Europe reaching its sad inevitable conclusion. The end of the premacy of Europe the colonial empires, the rise of the USA and the Soviet Union, they all ended/began here. Its fitting that such an event gets such an amazing mesmeric film.

Extended Version, Interesting. What pieces are added Doc?