Trollheart

THE STARS OF THE SHOW

Bruno Ganz, as Adolf Hitler
It would of course be odd if, in a film centred around him, Hitler were not the key figure here, but it's the portrayal of the Nazi dictator by Bruno Ganz that really strikes me. Unfortunately I don't speak German, and anyway my copy came bizarrely with some sort of Slavic audio track, but in any case it's subtitled so I just switched the sound off, but commentators remark upon Ganz's voice and accent being uncannily, even eerily close to that of the Fuhrer himself. Nevertheless, even without sound the man can still convey the passions, insanity, anger and refusal to admit defeat or take responsibility that make you see him not as Bruno Ganz, actor, but as the feared and hated leader of the Third Reich.

As the movie revolves around Hitler's final hours, there are no get-out clauses, like speeches to the masses from Nuremberg, where video footage can be studied and any actor worth his salt could competently duplicate Hitler's mannerisms and movements. In taking on the role of Hitler, Ganz has accepted that he must deliver a performance of a man who is broken, bitter and defeated, but determined to go down in a blaze of glory, to cheat his enemies of the final victory of displaying his dead body for all to see. He shows us the narcissism of the man, the blind faith in his own ability and his rage against everyone who is seen to have let him down. We see virtual spittle fly from his mouth and his eyes crease up like a mental patient's as he lets loose a tirade of abuse on those he considers traitors, weak and disloyal. We see his body shake with apoplexy and his fists bunch in rage, slam down on tables and desks, and we see too his advancing Parkinson's begin to take hold: Hitler walks shakily, bent over, his hand trembling uncontrollably as he hides it behind his back.

Adolf Hitler could never be seen as a sympathetic figure, nor should he be, but here Ganz makes him into a more tragic, almost pitiable man than a monster, while still showing that the rages he can fly into and the cold calmness with which he orders executions, or commands men to stay and fight to the death in a lost cause, marked him as a dangerous lunatic. For years, that dangerous lunatic was the most powerful man in Europe, and his long dark shadow fell across most of the world as it struggled to get out from beneath it, and fight its way back to the sunlight. Ganz also (although this must really be credited to the writer and director) avoids portraying Hitler as a parody, a cartoon, a black villain (though he was), by endeavouring to show some of the more human traits of the man who almost destroyed the world. He loves his dog, he loves his wife. He sits with his nephews and nieces on his knee. He thanks Frau Junge for her help as he goes to commit suicide.

Such human traits are needed, because otherwise Hitler is a two-dimensional figure, and no matter how evil a person is there is always some spark of humanity within them somewhere; perhaps they are kind to their mother, or like animals, or give to charities. Nobody is one hundred percent evil, and to present them as such would be too easy, too banal. Look for the good in anyone and you'll find it; it may be a tiny spark but you will find it. But Ganz and Hirschfield are careful not to allow Hitler's few small redemptive qualities to outshine his innate brutality. Even as we see that he loves Eva Braun, he tenderly rejects her pleas for clemency for her brother-in-law and tells her kindly that all traitors must die. When she, tears shining in her eyes, looking for mercy in the face of her soon-to-be husband that is not there, asks why, at this late point in the war, when all is lost, he must pronounce such a doom on her brother-in-law, he snarls "It is my wish!" revealing the truth behind Adolf Hitler: that he cares nothing for anyone, and all who oppose him must die, even if it is almost too late to exact that vengeance, even if the vengeance itself will serve no purpose.

Looking at Ganz, it's sometimes hard to separate actor from historical figure, and you feel at times that you've somehow gone back in time, and are watching the final days of Adolf Hitler as they unfold in the bunker below Berlin. The fact that the movie is shot entirely in monochrome adds to that feeling of being back in 1945. It must have been hard for Bruno Ganz to have taken on the role of such a figure in Germany: pilloried, hated and despised by so many and yet there are those who secretly hope to bring back the ideals he espoused, and so it was important that the film not be seen as glorifying Hitler in any way. It was important that though he be seen as a tragic figure there be no sympathy for him, no understanding, no attempt at redemption. History must also be reported as it happened; no revisionism. Those who committed unspeakable acts must face them in the film, not pretend they did not do what history proves they did. Even at the end, Hitler's one comfort is that he cleansed Germany of so many Jews. He has no regret on that score, believing he did the right thing.

German director Wim Wenders is on record as accusing the film of trivialising the role Hitler played in World War II and of glorifying him. I don't see it. There's nothing here that makes me feel "this was a misunderstood genius", or even makes me feel sorry for him. Uppermost in your mind all the time is the knowledge of what he has done, what has been perpetrated at his hands, and that's something that there will never be any understanding of, nor forgiveness for. I personally think Ganz is far and away the best Adolf Hitler I have ever seen on film.

Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge

When the film opens, the aged Frau Junge is relating her experiences in the service of Hitler, and lamenting that she was so taken in by his charisma, as were so many millions of Germans. Initially we see her delighted to get the job as his personal secretary, but as the war begins to turn against Germany and defeat seems inevitable, she operates in the film almost as a disconnected spirit, an observer watching the fall of the man she had considered to be the greatest German ever, and she sees too the way his people react, now that he has been proven to be fallible. Many turn against him, though in private, like Himmler trying to sue for peace and Goerring wishing to take over in Hitler's stead; many desert him, while the more loyal or stubborn refuse to surrender. Some, like Goebbels and his wife, decide suicide is the only path remaining to them, while Eva Braun, infatuated with him and it would seem perhaps fascinated by death, is happy to die with him.

She sees how the great Nazi empire was really held together by the almost supernatural strength of this man's charisma and will, and that when it is clear that he is losing his grip, and the war has turned against him, his empire begins to fragment as people lose faith in him and try to save their own skins. Hitler's fantasy orders, commanding armies that are not there into battle, thinking he will be able to spring a surprise attack on the Russians and trap them, and thus win the war, show everyone that he has lost touch with reality, and they can no longer depend on him. Frau Junge is torn as she watches the man she respected fall apart, and as the full horror of what he has done begins to become apparent she wonders what is to become of her.

She watches Eva Braun dance and party as if nothing is wrong, wilfully refusing to accept reality, witnesses firsthand the cold determination of Magda Goebbels, who reasons that her children cannot survive in a world without the Nazi party and Hitler, and hears, as does everyone else, the slow disintegration of the mind of her Fuhrer and he slips deeper and deeper into a fantasy in which he expects still to turn the tide of the war.

In ways, Trudl Junge represents all the idealistic, starstruck young women, and men, who followed Hitler into perdition, believing everything he said and trusting totally in his ability to lead them back to glory. She realises much later how wrong she was, as she relates in the film's closing minutes seeing the grave of a young German woman who was the same age as her, executed by the Nazis in the same month she signed on as Hitler's secretary. As she shakes her head and her eyes mist, her final words, indeed, the final words of the film, hang heavy in the air: "Youth is no excuse."

Why do I love this movie?

I absolutely did not expect to, and so it took me by complete surprise that it affected me as it did. I have never seen, nor do I think I ever will see, a more faithful and chilling portrayal of Hitler on the screen. The movie also shys away from explaining what Hitler was about, trying to see things through his eyes or even trying to excuse or justify what he did. It also similarly avoids the easy-to-fall-into trap of damning him, creating a two-dimensional caricature of ridicule and disgust. "Downfall" certainly shows the Fuhrer's madness, and no apologies are offered for what he did, but the crowning achievement I believe of the movie is that it's told through the eyes of an ordinary German girl; not a rabid Nazi, but someone who truly believed Hitler would be Germany's salvation, and who realises all too late that she has placed her faith in a madman, that she has, for the last three years, served a tyrant and a despot, and that he cares less about his people than an abuser of animals cares about his pets.

It's her realisation, tearful and horrified, as the film unfolds, that she has been party to such horrors, even if they were unknown to her, that shocks and revolts her, and in many ways she is a surrogate and metaphor for the entire German people, who were prepared to in some cases wilfully and in others blindly ignore all that was perpetrated in their name. The film newsreels of the people of Auschwitz being taken to see what had been taking place there is harrowing, but scarier yet is the look on some - not all - of the faces of these ordinary Germans. That looks says, without words, "so what?"

And it is this deep, ingrained belief in their own superiority and hatred of jews that sadly ensures that though Hitler is now just ashes, like his dream of empire, a thousand-year reich that lasted barely ten in all, Nazism and fascism is still with us today, and probably always will be.

For some people, history will always repeat itself, as they refuse to learn from it.
A very sad truth about we stupid humans.

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