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Der Untergang

I’m going to spend a couple hours down at the Oriental Theatre tonight. They have a free 7 O’clock showing of The Downfall, the chilling, Oscar-nominated film about the final hours of Adolf Hitler.

What makes this film so different from the multitude of other Nazi movies is that this is a German film. The way I understand it, this is really the first time the topic of Hitler has been handled in this manner in Germany. Understandably, Naziism is a taboo topic in Germany today, radical right wing groups notwithstanding. Last year, there was an uproar over a simple wax figure of Hitler being placed in a Berlin museum. Nazi symbols are illegal, and any public reference to the Hitler regime is severely frowned upon.

The controversy surrounding this film is the fact that it gives us Hitler the man, not Hitler the dictator. While we are all accustomed to the archival footage of Hitler spewing his hate rhetoric, this film shows us a terrified, desperate, beaten man who knows he’s at the end of the line. The real terror, of course, lies in the fact that it was simply a human being, not a monster, who orchestrated one of the darkest chapters in human history. The question of “How could this happen?” is apparently not addressed directly in the film, but the human portrayal of genuinely evil men forces the audience to contemplate the issue on their own.

I love German history, so this one’s going to be tough for me. It’s impossible to leaf through German history books without acknowledging the permanent stain left by the Third Reich. I look forward to seeing how the Germans involved with the film approach the subject of their most shameful moment. Should be interesting.