325. Downfall (2004)

Starring: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ulrich Matthes

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Running Time: 155 mins

Downfall (Der Untergang) is a German film that follows the last ten days of The Second World War, focussing on the wills of Adolf Hitler to stay on in Berlin and fight to the end, to save Germany from the Russians, despite the fact that his country was in complete decline.

This was an absolutely fascinating film. I thought that it was documented in a factually accurate, yet still extremely interesting way, which I find is often hard for films to do if they are to go into such factual and historical detail.

As well as being so interesting, this film managed to be incredibly dramatic with the story of Hitler’s final days, and I found it very emotional and shocking to see how the ambitions of pretty much one man managed to cause the deaths of so many people around him in such detail, along with the 50 million other people who died in World War II.

In terms of the actors, I thought everybody in this film was truly excellent. Firstly, Alexandra Maria Laura’s performance as Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge, was absolutely fantastic, however I felt that the portrayal of Adolf Hitler himself by German actor Bruno Ganz was just brilliant, as he managed to give off the true sense of how strong-willed, yet truly insane, the Nazi leader was.

Overall, I’ll give this an 8.4 for being incredibly interesting to watch, as well as being dramatic, informative, emotional and just plain brilliant.