Bruno Ganz makes Downfall deeply unsettling, and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s bunker drama earns its close attention to a hateful company. Its crowded storytelling sometimes weakens the effect, but we recommend it for the performances and the conviction of the reconstruction.
Downfall is a disturbing historical drama whose lead performance justifies the discomfort of spending so long in Hitler’s company. Oliver Hirschbiegel follows the daily business of the bunker as the regime collapses, giving close attention to people still occupied with serving its leader. That is a difficult subject to handle without making their troubles seem more important than anything beyond their immediate surroundings. The film sometimes comes too close to doing so, but Bruno Ganz keeps it worth watching.
Ganz makes Hitler diminished and paranoid without making him safely remote from the rest of humanity. His performance has room for the ordinary qualities that a caricature would remove, and those qualities make the continued obedience around him harder to watch. We were horrified by the routine business of attending to this man, carried on as his regime comes apart. Ganz’s recognisable humanity is crucial here: we can understand how people might become accustomed to his presence, which makes their service more disturbing.
Rainer Klausmann’s cinematography helps make that proximity uncomfortable; there is little pleasure in being admitted to this private circle. Bernd Lepel’s production design gives the bunker credibility as a place of work, somewhere its inhabitants can carry on behaving as though their duties still matter. The reconstruction works because we believe people could get used to living here. Hirschbiegel draws considerable tension from the persistence of daily life amid the collapse.
Alexandra Maria Lara’s Traudl Junge gives us a point of entry into the company, although Bernd Eichinger’s screenplay is reluctant to limit itself to her perspective. Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels and Ulrich Matthes as Joseph Goebbels help keep Ganz from becoming the only person worth studying. The ensemble gives weight to the different responses to defeat. But the script’s determination to take in so many people gradually makes attention harder to sustain.
Hans Funck’s editing keeps the crowded narrative comprehensible, but cannot make every subplot feel necessary. At 155 minutes, the film has stretches in which another private crisis adds little to what we already understand about the people trapped here. Stephan Zacharias’s music adds solemnity, though the performances need little help in making the distress apparent. The length allows the pressure to build; the repeated demands on our sympathy sometimes make us less responsive to it.
Historical dramas can give their subjects too easy a hearing simply by staying close to them. Hirschbiegel is attentive to the different kinds of defeat within the bunker, and that patience is a virtue. He is less searching about the importance these people attach to their own suffering. We occasionally felt pushed towards pity before the film had examined why we should grant it. With so much attention given to their private troubles, their reasons for continuing to serve Hitler need closer scrutiny.
Showing Hitler as recognisably human is still the right decision. Ganz makes their obedience more troubling, and his performance deserves the attention most critics have given it. We recommend Downfall, with a reservation about how much room Eichinger makes for everybody else’s predicament. Allow it an uninterrupted evening, and do not expect much relief.
