CINEMA THERAPY, THE FALL, THE DESCRETE FASCINATION OF EVIL

@ Maria Pina Egidi

A new post was recently added on our dramatherapy twin blog, called Dramatherapy: love and destruction in a phrase, inspired by the film Downfall. The post was meant to introduce and comment on part of the creative and emotional journey experienced by the group involved in the representation of Ionesco’s Rhinocéros. The work is dramatic and complex and has many levels of reading: historical-documentary, psychological, ideological, or simply narrative. Here we would like to analyse some, more specific aspects, which are linked to the representation of the character of Adolf Hitler.

The film is partially based on the short stories written by Traudl Junge, who was the dictator’s secretary in the last days of April 1945, in the Reich Chancery bunker. It shows the events taking place in the Führerbunker, and the dynamics between the inhabitants of this last bulwark of Nazism. While Germany is on its last legs and Berlin is about to fall, the Führer is planning the impossible and absurd redemption of the great Reich, keeping an indifferent and unfeeling attitude to the fall now imminent. With Hitler, in the final madness, are involved Eva Baun, Joseph Goebbels and his whole family, the dictator’s faithful followers and his domestic helpers. The epilogue of the film is consistent with the known historical truth: the last-minute wedding, the suicide, few survivors, amongst them the young secretary, Traudl Junge, who will be declared innocent by the War Tribunal, because of her young age.

Many years after the events in the film, in more than one interview, Traudl Junge will painfully state that she still feels guilty and conniving, and that she never considered her young age at the time of the events as an alibi or an attenuating circumstance. The young woman, acquitted by the War Tribunal, is guilty according to the tribunal of her own conscience. A very hard conclusion, which can be shared if we assume that there are different levels of personal responsibility and that lack of awareness, conniving with power, ignorance and passivity hold the black soul of the world. How can a girl, who is just 22 and is coming from a small town – and who, by the way, was not even a member of the Nazi party – have so completely complied with an ideology of death that she feels like a criminal after so many decades?

The answer is in the film. The possibility of representing the events from more than one point of view, so that everybody is the main character, is the great strength of cinema and theatre, especially if they are representing historical facts. The audience is given a chance to understand, globally, the dynamics and the motivations of the events told, which, through other forms of narration, would only be highlighted through processes of analysis and synthesis much more articulated and complex.

  
 The situation described in the film, quite aside from its historical context, is extreme. Without doubt, the young Traudl in the film is portrayed as being green and, since she is here in a situation outside either an historical or a humane context, she lacks the ethical and cultural landmarks with which she could potentially relate.

Bruno Ganz, who plays the role of the Führer, creates an extremely distressing character: moments of utter frenzy alternate with moments of goodness, understanding, and even kindness. Take as an example the scene in which he is selecting his future secretary, behaving rather like a father-figure, and then chooses Traudl, the girl from Munich, as his close collaborator. Think about the tenderness in his strokes to his dog, about his extreme faithfulness to Eva Braun, or even about the shaking of his hand, which may remind the audience of their elderly people afflicted by Parkinson’s Disease.

When this film was shown in the cinemas, it left part of the critics speechless: too daring the representation of the character’s contradictions; too dangerous to show Hitler’s human side and to turn him into an everyday person; unimaginable that the audience should be invited to feel even a little empathy for the Parkinson trembling or for the strokes to the dog. The risk of outrageous revisionism was felt as being just around the corner. In my opinion, the film is far from running this risk. It shows cruelly a reality both simple and terrible. It would be perfect if instinct of death and destruction, indifference towards other human beings, abuse of power, deception, and all that is related to the concept of “evil” could always be easily recognisable. It would be a great advantage if the biblical mark of Cain were visible and immediately identifiable, as this would allow us to immediately recognise those who have chosen evil as their guide in life. There is no revealing smell of sulphur to signal the presence of evil, nor the ambiguous and disturbing beauty of a fallen angel, maybe fighting with its creator or maybe just longing to experience its individuality. Evil, the Devil, and black souls are subtle and astute: they hide behind an appearance of normality, they violate the locks of the human consciousness with the picklock of triviality, of discretion, and of a low profile. Seeing the film as “The Fall” is maybe one of the less passive approaches for the audience. It involves senses, emotions and moral principles. Just to mention a few effects: amazement at the cruelty in the suicide dynamics (e.g. Magda Goebbels); maybe sense of guilt if, for the fraction of a second, we felt Hitler’s kindness in dealing with Traudl; anger in seeing two women relaxing, while smoking outside the bunker a clandestine cigarette, taken by the pleasure of the situation, and utterly oblivious to the rubble around them. A piece of work like this could leave a sensitive audience feeling an uneasiness which, if not “processed”, would be a missed opportunity. The awakening of one’s conscience

brings new questions on one’s moral principles, on one’s ability to discern, on one’s role in the context in which one lives and works, on the wise use of critical sense and free will. These are not only the cornerstones of an individual’s ethics, but also the elements on which the identity and the perception of the individual are defined, as well as the fullness and steadfastness that may be called “wellbeing”.

All in all an extremely rich starting point for Cinema Therapy.

Movie: Trailer of The Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel

Produced by Bernd Eichinger
Written by Joachim Fest, Bernd Eichinger, Traudl Junge, Melissa Müller
Starring Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Corinna Harfouch, Ulrich Matthes, Juliane Köhler
Music by Stephan Zacharias
Cinematography Rainer Klausmann
Editing by Hans Funck
Distributed by Constantin Film, Newmarket Films (English subtitles)
Release date(s) September 16, 2004 (Germany), February 18, 2005 (USA)
Running time 156 minutes (original cut), 178 minutes (extended cut)
Country Germany, Italy, Austria 
Language German, Russian
Budget €13,500,000
Gross revenue $92,180,910