365 Days. 365 Films.

Downfall documents the final days of Adolf Hitler as he contemplates his actions toward the end of WWII. Now, I don’t know much about history but from what I do know about WWII, Bruno Ganz’s portrayal of Hitler was accurate and well thought out. Director, Hirschbiegel, manages to spark an array of emotions from the audience toward Hitler, potentially because the film avoids much mention of Hitler’s mass killings, you do sort of feel a little sorry for him which is simply a display of brilliant writing and direction.

Emotions aside, according to what my resident WWII expert says, this is true to life and through the murder, suicide and generally horrific happenings of this time, the director manages to create a feeling of escapism while still reminding the audience of the history behind it and the lessons to learn from it.

Because the actual story is not of a great deal of interest to me it was difficult to get into at first and difficult to remain interested, possibly because I knew how it was going to end and what was generally going to happen. Having said that it was well made to keep a certain level of interest throughout the two and a half hours.