AMD 3 Jake Freund

Wow, already to the 3rd AMD for winter semester. Where has the time gone? Anyway, I decided to watch the movie "Downfall" for this particular assignment. "Downfall" is a drama about the final days of the WWII, the Nazi party, and speculation on how Hitler died. The main character (I hesitate to call him the protagonist) of the movie is Adolf Hitler. The story revolves around the stress he faced as the allies closed in on Germany near the end of WWII. There are a few sub-plots about the three wives of Hitler and a child who served as a tank buster for the Nazi army. The movie is in German, but I watched it with English subtitles. I did my best to not look at the subtitles as much as possible and I was still able to understand about 20% of the movie!

I enjoyed "Downfall." It was a gripping story that was able to keep me engaged for the almost 2 and a half hour running time. I like to think of myself as a WWII history buff, so I really enjoyed the that the focus on the story was on Hitler's last days; since there's no consensus on what happened to him or how he died after the war. My only complaint is that there are no characters I could sympathize with, because they're all Nazis; history's most infamous bad guys. Sure the tank buster kid is sympathetic because he's an innocent victim of the Nazi agenda and is forced into the terrors of war at a very young age. But his story isn't relevant to the main plot, so it seems a little tacked on. But I digress. In conclusion, I'd recommend "Downfall" to history buffs and fans of war movies.