Downfall

[GePap]

So anyone else here see "Downfall", or "Der Untergang", the German nominee for the Oscars about the last days of Hitler?

I thought it was an excellent movie- Bruno ganz as Hitler was great- lost of people come into the story, and most are protrayed rather well, thoguht for a while you have no idea whom many are supposed to be.

Its a very graphic film, much more graphic than most horror films ever are- and I have honestly never seen so many people kill themselves on film..its a veritable suicide fest.

My only problem, and its a quible, is that the actress that plays Hitler's secretary, Alexandra Maria Lara, is just too pretty for her own good (she acts very well).

[Last Conformist]

It must suck to be an actress and have the name "Lara".

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
It must suck to be an actress and have the name "Lara".

Anyways, did the movie open already in Sweden?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap

The potential for bad Tomb Raider-related jokes is limitless.

Anyways, did the movie open already in Sweden?

My newspaper reviewed it in today's issue.

[Boris Godunov]

I haven't seen it, but want to.

I've heard a minority of critics are complaining that the movie "humanizes" Hitler and his cronies too much, which is objectionable. My attitude is--yeah, and? They were human beings, after all. We can try to distance ourselves from them by labeling them "monsters" to make us more comfortable, but that would be a disservice to the truth. I think it's more important to see that, in fact, history's greatest villains were still human. That shows that perhaps no one is immune from descending to such wretchedness.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I haven't seen it, but want to.

I've heard a minority of critics are complaining that the movie "humanizes" Hitler and his cronies too much, which is objectionable. My attitude is--yeah, and? They were human beings, after all. We can try to distance ourselves from them by labeling them "monsters" to make us more comfortable, but that would be a disservice to the truth. I think it's more important to see that, in fact, history's greatest villains were still human. That shows that perhaps no one is immune from descending to such wretchedness.

Funny - the one review I heard was the exact opposite; the reviewer liked the fact that the movie reminds us that Hitler was human without "rehabilitating him". He's still evil, but human.

I'll be interested to see it when it's out on DVD here.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

The potential for bad Tomb Raider-related jokes is limitless.

Someone shares the same name as a fictional character? Unthinkable!

[GePap]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I haven't seen it, but want to.

I've heard a minority of critics are complaining that the movie "humanizes" Hitler and his cronies too much, which is objectionable. My attitude is--yeah, and? They were human beings, after all. We can try to distance ourselves from them by labeling them "monsters" to make us more comfortable, but that would be a disservice to the truth. I think it's more important to see that, in fact, history's greatest villains were still human. That shows that perhaps no one is immune from descending to such wretchedness.

Hitler is depicted as a human being, a fallible one, increasingly divorced from reality around him, angry and venegful, and holding a series of rather inhumane and violent notions about nature. But still a human being you could imagine easily being real, which is good.

There have been complainst about how Goebbels is protrayed, and perhaps he is too much of a caricature- Frau Goebbels thought is a powerful character in the film, and has the honor of participating in the most chilling sequence in the movie.

Here in NYC they are showing it in only one screen....

[Boris Godunov]

Chilling - ah, that would have to have been the poisoning of the Goebbels' children, I take it?

[GePap]

Yes.

[BeBMan]

The movie was very successful here. Unfortunately I still haven't seen it Will rent it sooner or later.....

The controversy was the same here - does it depict Hitler "too human" or not? Another point of some critcs was even more strange: some said the movie doesn't provide enough insight about how the nazis came to power, how their system worked etc.. Of course nobody could expect that from a movie which concentrates on the last few days of the regime. They seemed to think one can't make a movie about the nazi era without showing the "whole picture". IMO one of those cases where they think the audience is generally stupid

Most agreed that acting, esp. by Bruno Ganz was excellent.

[Zoid]

Bruno Ganz is awesome and quite frightening. He IS Hitler in the movie



And regular Bruno.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by BeBro


Another point of some critcs was even more strange: some said the movie doesn't provide enough insight about how the nazis came to power, how their system worked etc..

Of course nobody could expect that from a movie which concentrates on the last few days of the regime. They seemed to think one can't make a movie about the nazi era without showing the "whole picture".

What, a film about the last days of Hitler that doesn't include the depiction at length of Jewish immigration in the early Middle Ages, followed by Church inspired pogroms, the assimiliation of Jews into the later German kingdoms and principalities, the secularization of many German Jews and Bismarck's Kulturkampf and the Weimar Republic, the text of the Versailles Treaty, the Wall Street Crash and the assassination of Rathenau ?

Clearly it's going to be a skecthy depiction of the rise of Nazism at best.