Arts

Film: Downfall

I always feel unqualified to comment on historical films. I view them more as education than entertainment. (Although naturally I try to bear in mind the film-maker's particular slant, and that it's just one interpretation of the available evidence.)

Downfall is difficult, shocking and gripping. It successfully steers clear of stereotypical portrayals of the Second World War and is all the better for it, breathing life and complexity into characters that have too frequently been played simplistically.

Except for the last minute, the film is a reconstruction of events. But it closes with a snippet from a recent interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's secretary on whose memoirs the film is based. We have a duty, she suggests, to find out what's really happening, to move outside a blind spot.