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I'll admit that I first heard of this movie from the Downfall parodies on YouTube, although (naturally) the real movie is not at all like the absurdist nonsense and false-subtitles-comedy of internet meme. It is a first-class production, and very dark.
It is the story of a vindictive dictator detached from reality, alternatively retreating into fantasies of impossible victories, or else ruthlessly ordering the execution of those subordinates he thinks have "failed" him. It is the story of a confused, cowardly and criminal high command that cannot think for itself, and of soldiers who would rather shoot themselves than surrender--not a few, perhaps, because they know they have already compromised themselves by committting unforgiveable crimes. It is the story of followers and fanatics who in chilling displays of devotion to the criminals they call their leaders, choose suicide over survival, to the point of even murdering their own children, lest they live in a world free from their 'ideals'.
It is also the story of those at least somewhat sane souls who try to live and leave, although not everyone who seeks safety in escape finds it. It is also the story of front-line soldiers, and medics, trapped in the doomed battle for the ruined city--men who find themselves in a fight that even the most experienced could never have been trained or prepared for, to say nothing of those drafted and thrown into the fight at the last minute, without training or arms, by an irresponsible and fanatical 'leadership'. It is the story of those disturbingly few officers and others who saw the need for surrender and survival. And it is the story of confused and disoriented civilians who often do not really understand what is happening to them, like the proverbial deer staring at the headlights of an approaching truck...unable to fully understand their danger, let alone their share of the guilt, these pitiable souls--who count among their number a young woman who works as Hitler's secretary--are unsure whether they will live, or whether the nightmare that has become their lives, or what used to be their lives, will ever end.
There is a saying, I hear, among the Germans: "Better an end in terror, than terror without end". And never was this saying more true, than in April of the Year 1945.
....
*realizes that he has to knock off one point so that it won't show up in the randomized shortlist of favorite movies anymore*
*joinyoselfinzenameoflove*
*throws the pencil*
..........~
Yeah, there's that.
And there's one other thing.
Albert Speer was really just another slave-labor lovin' Nazi who wrote a long, stupid book because he got away with it-- just like Eirch von Munstoong.
Or whatever his name was. His stupid, bosch, name.
There were no good Nazis.
They were Nazis-- therefore, they were also bad.
Very, very bad. And evil. And shitty.
The good Nazis were the ones who got killed. The good Nazis were the ones that ended up dead.
The good Nazis were the ones who got shot in the head by the Russians, and ended up dead in a ditch somewhere.
And dead.
So that they lose, in the end, and do NOT WIN.
Because of how dead the Russians made them.
(9/10)
