quote:After all, Germans fought for Hitler to his death and then, in a historic nanosecond, became remarkably good democrats. It is easier to explain Hitler than to explain that.
One man's madness, barbarity, charisma, boldness, courage and hatred -- all qualities of Hitler -- are easy enough to explain and to find. But a whole people's madness is a different story. That says more about us, and about what we are capable of, than anything about Hitler. And when the people are the people of Beethoven, when they provided the Jews among them with comfort and even riches before murdering them, when you could go by bike from the Weimar of the sublime Goethe to the Buchenwald of the cruel SS, then you are talking of the inexplicable. This quality of the Germans during the Third Reich, this quality of the Chinese during Mao's Great Leap Forward, this quality of the Cambodians or the Rwandans or -- in 1937-38 -- the Japanese in Nanking, resides in us all. This, really, is the great lesson of "Downfall" and of history itself.
It is good to humanize Hitler because a man, after all, is all he ever was. But once you strip him of any extraordinary powers, once he is reduced to mere human being, you have to confront the fact that where he madly led, people serenely followed. This -- not Hitler -- is what's chilling about "Downfall." It amends Alexander Pope, who said that the proper study of mankind is man. Yes. But the proper study of man is mankind.
I've always been uncomfortable with calling people who commit horrible crimes "animals" or "inhuman" for this reason. It allows us to distance ouselves from the capacity to commit such acts.
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Looks great. I hope I see it around here, but It will likely stay in the major cities. I hate trying to park in San Francisco!
Posts: 410 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote: so we can really see them as human beings -- granted, horrendous, evil, ignorant and empty -- but still human, because we can't learn from monsters
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It really is a fantastic movie. It was a little weird cause my friend and I were sitting next to two skinheads with swastikas, but, still, good movie.
The acting was fantastic. It was a little strange feeling sorry for Hitler, certainly wasn't a feeling I ever thought I would feel. But he seems so, I don't know, childlike and helpless during much of the movie. He's living in a fantasy land and desperately wants his dream to come true, but you know while watching it that nothing will come of it.
I still have mixed feelings about it, it's a powerful film. There's no denying it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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