This is a brave film. Almost breathtaking. It's brave in the most obvious sense, for it represents a very deliberate attempt to open some closed doors in Germany's history, and it really doesn't flinch from what it finds behind them. This is the kind of thing that can only be done by the nation itself, a process of acceptance, realisation, brave discovery.
Really, that'd be enough, and during the slightly self-conscious, theatrical opening stages, there's a sense that "Downfall" is impressed by its own existence, unsure of quite what to do next. But it becomes less tentative with each passing minute, in the process gaining the confidence to start painting in shades of grey rather than rashly splashing black and white.
Given the sensitivity of the subject matter, it's an extraordinary achievement that this is a deeply and increasingly compelling piece of cinema rather than just a praiseworthy exercise. It's bloody ugly, of course, but it's much more than that: in the midst of Hitler's downfall, and Berlin's downfall beyond the bunker door, we find all manner of human life, from blind, misguided heroism to rank cowardice.
There's an odd reticence about political detail, but that perhaps lets something more important come through: an essential humanity, even in such extremity. Remarkably, brilliantly, there appears to be no moral here, no particular point to be made...except that it happened, that these people existed, led a nation to psychopathic slaughter, and died utterly defeated. That's what it's about, in the end: defeat. Free from the victors' triumph, either in front of or behind the camera, that defeat looks rank, sordid, and savagely human. You can't look away.
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