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Has anyone else seen (or heard of) Downfall? It's a foreign (German) film about the final days of Hitler in his bunker at the end of WW2.
If you haven't seen it, I would suggest seeing it if you have any appreciation for history, or if you just want to see some incredible acting. Bruno Ganz as Hitler is amazing, and the others are all good too. Some of it is truly surreal. It's told somewhat loosely from the point of view of a secrerary working in the bunker, who is a real woman they got much of their information from.
The subtitles take away from it slightly, I would have liked to be able to watch their faces more, but you can still see some amazing stuff. I recommend it to everyone, and hope you all have good theaters around you that play independent and foreign films.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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If ya go into BBCNews AdvancedSearch, then enter Search for: Hitler Search in: Entertainment Search from: 24 March 2005 To: 24 March 2005 Sort by: Relevance then click the GO button, you'll get a link to their ~3minute news video on Downfall
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I haven't seen the movie, but I was mesmerized by one backstage shot of "Eva"=Juliane Kohler ...she looked so innocent, yet guilty. Very unique and moving, I'll try to dredge up the photo, I remember saving it to disk...
Like some reviewers, I find it ironic that Ganz played the angel/hero in "Wings of Desire", one of my favorite films, then played a demon like Hitler in this recent film. I applaud his efforts to illuminate Hitler through drama, and would love to see this film. Some reviews: w
quote:"I think in general there has been a very simplistic way of looking at this person [Hitler]," says Hirschbiegel. "He's always been depicted as a madman, a monster, almost a cartoon character. And I think that's kind of dangerous because it plays down his part and it gives the impression that he wasn't really fully responsible.
quote:"So seeing him as a person is a lot scarier to me because as a human being, he had a lot of tools at hand to seduce, lure and manipulate people to do or think whatever he wanted them to."
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Eva Braun is...psychotic in the movie. She has some serious issues in her devotion to Hitler.
And Hitler is portrayed in some ways as a human being, and not a madman. He's obviously unhinged in many ways, whenever he is talking about how the war is going or his big military plans. But it makes him seem pitiful, when he thinks he has all these men to move around Europe like it's a Risk board and he thinks he can save his dream, but he can't, and everyone knows it.
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I haven't seen it, but I saw it caused a lot of controversy in Norway, at least in the newspapers. Portraying Hitler as human does not get you brownie points in a nation that was occupied for five years. And at that, he treated us with silk gloves. I wonder how it was received in Poland?
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