Downfall - 7

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and written by Bernd Eichinger, using autobiographical books from the same period, this film portrays Hitler in his last days in a bunker in Berlin. The main character is Traudl Junge, Hitler's last secretary, who is one of the few to survive the war. The film begins and ends with actual footage from Junge that shows her struggle to make sense of her situation and feeling guilt for not trying to learn the implications of the Nazi's worldview. The film shows both the humanity of the Nazi's in charge as well as their loss of humanity as there ideology takes over their thinking. When compassion is lost, when the value of human life resides in the success and failure of nationalism, then meaning is lost, and survival is suffering. The film is very sad and violent because of the many suicides at the end, including Hitler, a lot of his commanders, and the Goebbel family. One of the great scenes is Hitler explaining his vision of the Third Reich to the architect Albert Speer -how Germany is going to rebuild Berlin into the greatest city on earth in the tradition of the Roman and Greek empires. In the end, the only success Hitler sees in his own life is that he has saved the world from 6 million Jews and millions of other "inferior" people. This film shows Hitler as a human being which he was (the film portrays him as one suffering from Parkinson's or a related disease), it also point to how he was power hungry and insane -he had lost touch with reality, lost a vision for what it means to be human.