Der Untergang, pro and contra.

Few films in recent years have been the subject of so much and such radically split critical attention in Germany as Der Untergang (The Downfall). If you read German, the best way to follow the debate is probably to head over to the Perlentaucher and choose just about any day's round-up of the feuilletons over the past few weeks and dive in. In today's alone, for example, the Tauchers point to around half a dozen pieces on the film in the Saturday editions of the German papers. Not just reviews, mind you; most of those have already run their course. No, these are essays about possible reverberations, the accomplishments or failures of the filmmakers and so on.

There hasn't been nearly as much debate in English, of course. But now two pieces have appeared which pretty well represent the pro and the con takes. In the Guardian, Ian Kershaw, author of the widely admired two-volume biography of Hitler, presents the case for making the film in the first place, a primary point of contention:

I found it hard to imagine that anyone (other than the usual neo-Nazi fringe) could possibly find Hitler a sympathetic figure during his bizarre last days. And to presume that it might be somehow dangerous to see him as a human being - well, what does that thought imply about the self-confidence of a stable, liberal democracy? Hitler was, after all, a human being, even if an especially obnoxious, detestable specimen.

Kershaw's bottom line: "As a production, it is a triumph - a marvellous historical drama." And: "Above all, Bruno Ganz is superb as Hitler."

On the other side of the fence, we find the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Thomas Schmid. Which is interesting in itself, since the paper's editor, Frank Schirrmacher, has been an outspoken advocate of the project. For Schmid, though, the problem is not the danger of arousing sympathy for a monster, but rather, that the stated aim of producer and screenwriter Bernd Eichinger - "to achieve the highest accuracy of an authentic account" - is a joke. The film, argues Schmid, achieves precisely the opposite:

This movie has no other choice but to feed on the dark myth of Hitler.... Eichinger's film is an epic, nothing more and nothing less. It neither emancipates nor leads down the slippery slope of original sin. It is trivial.

And another thing: "Actor Bruno Ganz does not overcome Charlie Chaplin's caricature, he only creates a new one."

Back and forth it goes.

Posted by dwhudson at September 18, 2004 6:56 AM