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Watching Downfall is, curiously, a little like watching The Passion of The Christ—we enter the theatre knowing the basic story, and the film takes us through all the familiar plot twists (visits before Caiaphas and Pilate over here, the suicides of Hitler and Goebbels over there) while testing our endurance with its supposedly accurate, non-stop violence. The obvious difference, of course, is that one film is about the Son of God, and ends on a note of resurrection, whereas the other is about one of the worst governments ever known, and for the Germans, there is no clear hope in sight, even when Nazism ends; for many, the end of the war will mean not liberation, but another form of totalitarianism under the Soviets.

The Fuhrer sits with one of the Goebbels

But that sort of context is never made explicit in the film; like The Passion, Downfall expects the viewer to bring his or her own contextualization to the theatre, and it focuses so exclusively on the protagonist's death that you almost wish the film had offered some sense of what it was about his life that had brought things to this point. It could have been interesting, for example, to contrast the way Hitler spends his last days cowering underground with the open-air rallies he held earlier in his life, when he lectured with fiery confidence before an admiring audience of thousands, or to see what sort of relationships Hitler had had with his generals before all the betrayals and disappointments set in.

Curiously, the film also undermines its own dramatization of Hitler's last days by beginning and ending with clips from the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, in which the real-life Traudl Junge reflected on her role in these events shortly before her death in 2002. Downfall is an admirably matter-of-fact history lesson of a movie, but next to real footage of real people with real memories of those days—not to mention a sense of perspective, which is something Downfall avoids—it cannot help but pale by comparison.

Talk About It

1. Goebbels says the German people deserve what they have coming to them because they gave the Nazis a mandate; presumably he refers to the fact that Hitler was elected democratically. Do you agree or disagree? What responsibility does the public have for the actions of its leaders?
   
   
2. How has God judged nations in the past, for example in the Old Testament? Does God judge nations based on the actions of their leaders, or the everyday people, or both? Does God still judge nations today? If so, how? Was God judging Nazi Germany at the hands of Communist Russia? (Consider how God used the pagan Babylonians to judge Judah; see Habakkuk.)
   
   
3. We are often told to love the sinner but hate the sin. How does that apply to someone like Adolf Hitler? Do we benefit from seeing him humanized? Why or why not?
   
   
4. Why do you think people followed Hitler? Did they respond to the man or the message? Both? What do we respond to when we follow certain teachers and leaders today? Why do you think so many of Hitler's followers were prepared to commit suicide?
   
   

The Family Corner

Downfall is rated R for strong violence, disturbing images and some nudity. There are frequent images of bombs falling, people being shot and shooting themselves, people being lynched, and so on. There are also some pretty gruesome scenes of limbs being amputated in a hospital bunker. There are also a few naked breasts in scenes depicting the debauchery of certain officers who have given up on the war and prefer to go out partying.

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