DVD/150: DER UNTERGANG (DOWNFALL) (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)

The perfect VE Day viewing: Oliver Hirschbiegel's gruelling DER UNTERGANG which shows the downfall of the Reich with Adolf Hitler cornered in his bunker with a diminishing group of advisors, Eva Braun and staff including young Traudl Junge, a secretary, whose memoir the film is partly based on.

Hirschbiegel captures the terror on the streets of Berlin as the Russians advance and the army, are augmented by the Hitler Youth, committed to their Fuhrer to the bitter end. 

DOWNFALL's flaw is that Traudl Junge is too passive a character: she types and takes dictation but remains a blank canvess.

Bruno Ganz is stunning as Hitler; DOWNFALL was criticized for depicting Hitler in a sympathetic light but no sympathy is sought where Hitler flies into fearful rages over non-existant troops or demands the people of Germany die for being too weak.

Equally unforgettable is Corinna Harfouch's chilling, murderous Magda Goebbels.

Shelf or charity shop? Although destined for the limbo of my DVD plastic storage box, I will definitely watch this again for Ganz's towering performance, Harfouch's icy portrayal of a woman willing to kill her childen rather than have them live in a world without the Fuhrer and a bevy of fine performances by Ulrich Matthes as Goebbels, Juliane Kohler's Eva Braun, Heino Ferch as Albert Speer, Christian Berkel as the doctor Ernst-Gunther Schenck, André Hennicke as Mohnke and Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge.