Downfall

During the first scenes of the Oscar nominated Der Untergang, the biggest grossing movie ever in its country of Germany, we see Adolf Hitler selecting his new stenographer between 5 young women. As the very nervous Traudl Junge starts the test which consists of Hitler dictating a letter to her, she makes some mistakes to which he replies something like "Calm down, even I have made bigger mistakes". He's warm, and even fatherly to the girl, and you know he's Hitler, he who killed Jews to preserve his race and also tried to conquer the world, but you already start not hating him. Even liking him, because we're seeing something we haven't before, and that's the greatness Director Oliver Hirschbiegel achieves with this movie, he shows us the human side of Hitler and those around him, in their final days when staying in a bunker in Berlin while the Russians were taking the city and ending World War II and everything these people believed in.

Besides the wonderful Alexandra Maria Lara who plays Traudl Junge, this all German cast is also lead by Bruno Ganz as The Fuhrer in an amazing performance, Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, Ulrich Matthes as Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's Chiefs, and Corinna Harfouch as Goebbels' wife Magda. There several many other characters like Hitler's generals, the doctors, and even his cook maid.

We get to see what they all suffered on these last days for many of them, and who supported Hitler and who wanted to surrender, and also specific stuff about them that is not common knowledge like that Hitler was a vegetarian, or that he married his wife Eva just hours before they killed themselves. We see how exactly they killed themselves, who followed him to suicide and for what reasons, and the many other happenings in those final hours, most heart wrenching and horrifying, but fascinating.

The movie doesn't make you forgive Hitler and the Nazis for what they did, of course not, it just shows you what happened to these people, and you can continue feeling exactly what you felt before.
Personally, I absolutely don't agree with what Hitler did regarding the Jewish people and the preserve of his 'Pure Race', but I admire him for having the balls to try to conquer the world, and thanks to this masterpiece, now even more.