NOTE: The Moderate Voice publishes posts by guest writers from time to time. This is the first of a THREE PART review written by Dan Schneider of the movie Downfall. As in the case with our Guest Posts, views expressed reflect the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice.
By Dan Schneider
In the annals of film, the greatest screen portrayal of an evil world leader was undoubtedly Anthony Hopkins’ 1995 turn as President Richard M. Nixon in Oliver Stone’s Nixon. Within five to ten minutes of one’s first glimpse of Hopkins- a Brit who looked and sounded nothing like the 37th American President, one almost forgets what the real Nixon looked like. But, now there’s a contender who could knock Hopkins off his perch- or at least give him a good fight, and that is Bruno Ganz’s turn as Adolf Hitler in the 2004 Academy Award nominated Best Foreign Language Film from Germany, Downfall (Der Untergang- literally The Downfall).
What makes this all the more remarkable is that- unlike Nixon, many actors have tried and failed to get into Hitler’s skin, including the aforementioned Hopkins, who took on the role in The Bunker (1981). In fact, Ganz is so great at portraying Hitler- and he looks far more like the real Hitler than Hopkins did Nixon, even sans the Chaplinesque mustache and combover, that the film took much criticism for portraying Hitler as a real live human being. Heaven forfend that art contain some reality, or ‘truth,’ as the PC Elitists claim!
Ganz is brilliant- from his wild veering between depression and rages, to his jittery nervousness, and a shaking of his hands which, when held behind his body, seems to devolve almost into the claw of a wounded raptor, grasping for anything to steady his older than he looks fifty-six year old form. In fact, Ganz seems to age and literally shrink in size, as he stoops and hunches, with each succeeding scene. Yet, it’s the moments of tenderness Hitler shows his fiancée/wife, Eva Braun, his wounded indignation at perceived betrayals, and his timidity toward women, as well as impeccable manners, that really offends the PC. This ability to move a viewer is, of course, the manifestation of the great art of a great artist.
Many big name critics, around the world, though, took the film to task for the most asinine of reasons. The New Yorker’s David Denby, a minor thinker, wrote: ‘As a piece of acting, Ganz’s work is not just astounding, it’s actually rather moving. But I have doubts about the way his virtuosity has been put to use….We get the point: Hitler was not a supernatural being; he was common clay raised to power by the desire of his followers. But is this observation a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did?’ This incredibly idiotic statement, and many other PC comments like it, about film and art in general, are the very reasons I took to writing film criticism. What response could possibly be sufficient to the genocidal crimes of a Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or King Leopold?
But, art is not a response to, merely a reflection of, some form of reality- or its inverse, as filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once claimed.
Critic-at-large, Roger Ebert, rightly took Denby to task for his puerility, stating, ‘I do not feel the film provides ‘a sufficient response to what Hitler actually did,’ because I feel no film can, and no response would be sufficient.’ But, after such a concise summation, he then adds, of Hitler, ‘He was skilled in the ways he exploited that feeling, and surrounded himself by gifted strategists and propagandists, but he was not a great man, simply one armed by fate to unleash unimaginable evil.’ This is a remark clearly mindful of Louis Farrakhan’s claims, a few years back, that Hitler was a ‘great man,’ that unleashed a firestorm, but it is also logically self-defeating, and shows that Ebert is not only not a student of history, but much better in phrasing words than thinking out their logical consequences.
Hitler did not merely waltz onto the world stage, and have everything fall into his lap- from admirers to world events. He had a precise blueprint, aka Mein Kampf, worked for years perfecting his ‘craft’- demagoguery, and actively shaped his future. He came within two or three bad decisions of wiping out Eurasian Jewry, and even more minorities, as well as the colonial powers of Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Like it or not, Hitler was a great man, as were Stalin and Mao, and Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great before them. Mass murderers all, but all great, as long as one is mindful that great does not only mean ‘good’ nor ‘decent,’ and that great men also can have great flaws.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film does not reach the heights of art that Ganz does in his performance. Downfall is a solid to good film, much better than incompetent triumphalist swill like Saving Private Ryan, and on par with realist war films like Stalingrad or The Big Red One, but it does not come close to the greatness nor poesy of war films like Apocalypse Now, The Thin Red Line, nor even the stark symbolic poesy of Ingmar Bergman’s Shame, nor the definitive German World War Two film, Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot.
Part II Of This Review Will Be Posted On Friday
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.