If you haven't noticed, Germany in the early 21st century has been making quality movies focusing introspectively on not-so-pleasant excerpts from that nation's past (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, about the 1940s anti-Nazi student dissident who was guillotined; The Lives of Others, about the excesses of the Stasi, the East German secret police; and The Baader Meinhof Complex, about the Red Army Faction terrorist group). There also has been at least one film about Germany's more positive history (Luther, about the origins of the Protestant Reformation).
In the historical drama Downfall, Alexandra Maria Lara plays Traudl Junge (1920-2002), a real-life secretary to the Fuhrer who is depicted in documentary interview footage as well as by Lara. Like her age peer the martyred Scholl, the youthful Junge hails from Munich. Unlike Scholl, she took a moral wrong turn with the wrong crowd, but in so doing survived, along with others who were there, to give us an account of the last days in the bunker in Berlin.
One expects the movie climax to be the suicides of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, and the rest beforehand to be mostly a couple of hours of cinematically waiting around. Not so and not so, without giving too much away. Pay special attention, about an hour into the film, when Corinna Harfouch shows up in the role of Magda Goebbels, wife of the Nazi propaganda minister. Harfouch delivers a stunning supporting-actress performance. Also good, in a minor role, is Christian Berkel as an SS physician who has attained more sanity than others around him.
In my opinion, Downfall is the best of the recent German historical lot. Education in the psychological and sociological causes of World War II may not be complete without it. Moreover, as a war movie, Downfall in stature is up there with The Bridge on the River Kwai and Saving Private Ryan. From another lens, fascinatingly, albeit disturbingly.
In the historical drama Downfall, Alexandra Maria Lara plays Traudl Junge (1920-2002), a real-life secretary to the Fuhrer who is depicted in documentary interview footage as well as by Lara. Like her age peer the martyred Scholl, the youthful Junge hails from Munich. Unlike Scholl, she took a moral wrong turn with the wrong crowd, but in so doing survived, along with others who were there, to give us an account of the last days in the bunker in Berlin.
One expects the movie climax to be the suicides of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, and the rest beforehand to be mostly a couple of hours of cinematically waiting around. Not so and not so, without giving too much away. Pay special attention, about an hour into the film, when Corinna Harfouch shows up in the role of Magda Goebbels, wife of the Nazi propaganda minister. Harfouch delivers a stunning supporting-actress performance. Also good, in a minor role, is Christian Berkel as an SS physician who has attained more sanity than others around him.
In my opinion, Downfall is the best of the recent German historical lot. Education in the psychological and sociological causes of World War II may not be complete without it. Moreover, as a war movie, Downfall in stature is up there with The Bridge on the River Kwai and Saving Private Ryan. From another lens, fascinatingly, albeit disturbingly.