92 DUNKIRK
that he “could not imagine how a film of Hitler’s last days could possibly be better
done.” Kershaw also added his voice to a chorus of praise for Bruno Ganz’s per for-
mance: “Of all the screen depictions of the Führer... this is the only one which
to me is compelling. Part of this is the voice. Ganz has Hitler’s voice to near per-
fection. It is chillingly au then tic” (Kershaw, 2004). Still, some critics panned the
film. For example, J. Hoberman found it both “grimly self- important and inescap-
ably trivializing” (Hoberman, 2005). The most scathing critique of Downfall was
rendered by another German filmmaker, Wim Wenders. For Wenders, the movie
seems to adopt young Traudl Junge’s naïve point of view: enthrallment to Hitler’s
charisma not sufficiently countered by the bookend clips of the real Junge repudi-
ating her younger self. Wenders also objected to Hirschbiegel’s decision to not show
Hitler and Goebbels in the act of committing suicide: “Why can’t we see Hitler and
Goebbels dying? Are they not becoming mythical figures by not exhibiting them?
Why do they deserve so worthy an outlet, while all the other good and bad Ger-
mans are [graphically] killed?... The film has no opinion on anything, especially
of fascism or Hitler... so the seducer and the victim find themselves united once
again in the arbitrary lack of attitude that makes this film so incredibly annoying.
[This] lack of narrative [slant] leads the audience into a black hole, in which they
are induced (almost) imperceptibly to see [history] this time somehow from the
perspective of the perpetrators, at least with a benevolent understanding for them”
(Wenders, 2004).Reel History Versus Real History
In general terms Downfall ranks as one of the most historically accurate films ever
made. It does, however, rearrange the order of some of the events and resorts to
some streamlining. Furthermore, Peter Franz, the Hitler Youth boy decorated by
Hitler, is a fictional character, so his joining up with Traudl Junge to flee Berlin is
also a fabrication. In real ity, Junge did not escape Berlin so easily. After hiding out in
a cellar for a week with other Führerbunker refugees, Junge was arrested by the
Soviets on 9 May 1945, imprisoned and interrogated for the next five months, and
later hospitalized with diphtheria. She returned to Munich, her home town, in 1946.Dunkirk (2017)
Synopsis
Dunkirk is a war film written, co- produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. A
co- production between the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and the
Netherlands, the film depicts the successful May 1940 evacuation of more than
300,000 Allied (mostly British) troops from the beaches of Dunkirk, thus avoid-
ing capture or annihilation by the victorious Nazi forces that surrounded them dur-
ing the fall of France in the early part of the Second World War.Background
When Hitler’s armies overran the Low Countries and outflanked France in
May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and remnants of Belgian forces