Does Downfall "humanize" Hitler and his henchmen, as its critics have complained? Yes, and it should: to pretend these villains were less than human is to let ourselves off the hook, to take the easy and dangerous exit of demonology.

| Jan 22, 2013

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Some demons are too extreme to comprehend, but Hirschbiegel's film nonetheless provides a painfully unflinching glimpse into the outer workings of the mortally wounded Third Reich.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2005

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2005

Viewed through a North American lens, the movie itself seems more familiar than fascinating, more innocuous than inflammatory, and, at 21/2 hours, more tedious than anything else.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 18, 2005

For emotional effect it trades less in the spectacle of ebbing power than the tragedy of power's mysterious thrall.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 18, 2005

Hirschbiegel and Ganz are not apologizing for Nazism. They are trying to come to terms with the fact that the evils of Nazism were invented and carried out by human beings.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 17, 2005

In a remarkable performance, perhaps the most impressive portrait of Hitler ever captured on film, Bruno Ganz plays Hitler as delusional, hateful and cruel man -- but also human.

Full Review | Mar 14, 2005

Intriguing, oddly banal and ultimately deflating.

| Mar 11, 2005

Ganz seems to find exactly the right pitch: His Hitler feels real and human, yet there's nothing particularly ingratiating or sentimentalized about him. We never forget who he is.

| Mar 11, 2005

The final scenes of chaos in mid-1945 Berlin ... are simply riveting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 11, 2005

There are many lessons to be gleaned from Downfall. Perhaps the most important is that absolute faith in one's own virtue is not a commitment to virtuous behavior but a commitment to one's own will. It's a license to commit atrocities.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 11, 2005

Succeeds, perhaps too well for us to believe Hitler was some aberration who could never happen again.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 11, 2005

It provides a compelling glimpse at a nation wrestling with its greatest demon.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 11, 2005

It is useful to reflect that racism, xenophobia, grandiosity and fear are still with us, and the defeat of one of their manifestations does not inoculate us against others.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 11, 2005

Arresting and skillfully made.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 11, 2005

Some may feel that portraying a Hitler with such human dimension does a disservice to those who died and suffered at his command. Actually, the treatment makes him more accessible, and therefore more terrifying.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 10, 2005

An intense, incredibly exciting thriller.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2005

The filmmakers' mix of history and conjecture doesn't add up to anything more than reenactment.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 10, 2005

Few movies indeed have ever more completely conveyed Arendt's juxtaposition of the evil that sent millions to their graves with the stultifying banality of their murderers' lives.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 10, 2005