Downfall (2004)

Almost nothing in Downfall happens outside Hitler’s bunker, and the people his regime murdered are barely on screen. That’s a fair thing to question, and the film never fully answers it. What it does instead is strip every bit of myth off the end of the Third Reich. Bruno Ganz plays Hitler as a sick, trembling man whose delusions keep sending other people to die, and he’s frightening because he’s so human-sized. Alexandra Maria Lara gives the film its eyes as Traudl Junge, a young secretary who slowly understands what she has served. Above ground, children in uniform are sent to fight a war that was lost long before, and those scenes are the hardest to sit through. Corinna Harfouch is chilling as Magda Goebbels, calm in a way that stays with you. Oliver Hirschbiegel shoots it plainly and lets the silences do the work. A 9.0 because it shows how ordinary people kept a monstrous system running until the very last day. $24.01 says it comes up at your breakfast table tomorrow, and nobody minds the serious talk.

What works: Bruno Ganz’s frighteningly human performance, Alexandra Maria Lara’s quiet point of view, and plain, unflinching filmmaking that never glorifies anyone.

What doesn’t: Keeping the camera inside the bunker means the regime’s victims are almost entirely offscreen, and some viewers will find that focus hard to accept.

Who it’s for: Viewers who want to understand how the end of the war looked from inside, and anyone ready for a serious, heavy history film.