yesterday was hitler’s birthday. he would have been quite old. of course he died almost 60 years ago, but we all knew that. last night i went to see der untergang, or downfall as they call it here. it’s 2.5 hours of deliberate examination of the final days in the bunker in berlin. i had talked to people who saw the film, and their reviews weren’t very exciting. most of their criticism is valid and repeated by critics all over- it was slow, there wasn’t much character development, it tried to make sympathetic characters out of nazis, it tried to humanize hitler. (see lots of reviews hier.) if you’re expecting shocking revelations, you’ll be dissapointed. if you aren’t comfortable with the idea that all nazis were in fact human, and not alien monsters, then you will be dissapointed.

there are a number of different films emodied in der untergang. the most obcious is the human side of hitler realising that it’s all about to end. there’s also the depiction of those entrenched in nazi ideology coming to these conclusions as well, and their different ways of dealing with the situation. suicide shown by the film in a very gorey and graphic- there’s no way to romanticise it.

is this the best film about WWII ever made? i don’t know. it certainly is has some of the least dramatic fighting i’ve seen. this isn’t a spielberg feel good epic. there are no good guys. even the people you might think could be good have horribly tainted and problematic pasts. this review by the guardian examines these problems. but really, any intelligent person should already know this- not all nazis were monsters, but none of them were saints either. this is especially true for those who were actively involved with nazi organisations.

really though, this movie isn’t really for americans, or britons, or any of the “victors” of WWII. this is a german film for germans who still need to figure out what to do with their past. it’s said all the time, that today’s germans are not the same people that committed the worst crimes in the history of humanity, but these are their relatives. this third generation needs to figure out what’s going on before it gets worse. in this interview, director oliver hirschbiegel adresses the release of the film so close to the recent npd “victories” in sachsen and brandenburg;

“Looking at it from outside it’s probably much scarier than if you look at it from inside,” he suggests, lighting the first of several cigarettes, “because these people [neo-Nazis] are just dumb. They are farm boys who are like half-wits. And most of the people who voted for them didn’t do it because they’re Nazis or nationalists; they did it out of protest.” I cannot help thinking this all sounds rather familiar. “If there is a dangerous phenomenon,” he continues, “you find that in Austria, because there is a nationalist party there with an intelligent, charismatic leader, [Jorg] Heider. I think he is a dangerous man. But this in Germany, I do not take it seriously.”

he then went on to say on the humanising of hitler:

“That means something like the vagina that created this is still fertile. If we realise that these are human beings, we have to come to the painful realisation that evil must be in all of us and that if we look at history, evil seems to be the most powerful force on this planet. It’s our obligation to hold it at bay and to try to fight it off with peaceful means, using the energy of love. We have got both sides in us and anyone who has been around in life knows that that’s true. Every one of us has evil inside.

“Coming to terms with the past … I don’t know what that should be. To me it sounds a bit like finding peace. But there is no such thing. Again, this is the worst crime ever, by far, in the history of the world. There is no coming to terms. Of course the Germans now are not guilty. How could they be guilty? Most of them were born after the war.

“But they were our people, our ancestors, who did this. So we have the responsibility whether we want it or not. We have the responsibility.”