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"Der Untergang" (2004) is in many ways a brilliant film. It is
stylish and sumptuous in all the ways that the contemporary Federal
German authorities do not like it. Although graphic in its depiction of
the last days of the Third Reich, the fading glory of this Teutonic
Empire is evident in nearly all the shots. One feels that the movie
tries to capture the myth of the "Fall" with all the pathos
and poetic melodrama that it deserves.
Surprisingly, the film is quite faithful to the book (by national
conservative historian Joachim Fest) that it is based on. The epic
narrative is tightly told and no moralizing scenes detract from the
final struggle that the epic figures (eerily acted with attention to
detail, especially obvious in the operatic speech pattern of Dr.
Goebbels) of the collapsing National Socialist regime were engaged in.
The Volkssturm is portrayed as the last stand that it was. The blonde
and blue-eyed boys and girls shooting shells at the advancing Soviets is
shown not as acts of foolishness as one might expect in today's world of
hero-denial, but as a desperate resolve to do to a last bid for the
honor of Germany.
"Der Untergang" is the first German film that depicts an
historical account of history from the perspective of National
Socialists. For example, Dr. Goebbels in one scene hopefully exclaims
that one day all the lies about National Socialism will be cleared
while, in another scene, Adolf Hitler displays his disdain for the
"decadent Western democracies." Both exclamations are,
naturally, without comments from liberal historians. The film simply
shows what the NS elite thought and said at the time.
The only negative point of the film is obviously an obligatory one (in
these jewified times of ours). At the end of the film, it reads that
World War II cost 50 million lives, and six million Jews died. Now, that
is what I call exclusivity!
- Constantin von Hoffmeister
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