Downfall

The two themes of this blog are entertainment and politics, and how better to bring that combustible concoction back to the lab than how the fall from Congress of Tom Delay reminds me of my favorite film from 2005, the German picture, Downfall.

Downfall (Der Untergang) tells the story of Hitler's final days in the bunker, and those around him. We follow three somewhat "good" characters, in the sense that we can identify with them more than the bastard at the center of the drama, Adolf himself. The movie bore some criticism in Germany when released for depicting Hitler (played by world class genius actor Bruno Ganz) as a human being rather than metatextual monster, but that seems to me exactly the point.

Evil is not something out of literature, evil is a collection of choices in everyday life. Hitler's were those of a major league asshole. Those around Hitler choose various degrees of evil. Joseph Goebbels gets a strong second place, with his wife, Magda. I won't spoil it for anyone, but these two really provide the heart of darkness for this picture.

It's the empathetic characters that draw us in, Hitler's secretary (upon whose real life story much of the picture is based), architect Albert Speer who later did twenty years in Spandau and renounced his Nazism (writing the bestselling memoirs Inside the Third Reich), and a doctor who from my research seems the most fictionalized.

What's interesting and what relates to the story of Delay and Bushism is that when I watched Downfall, I felt the pull towards these characters due to abstract qualities all of us hold dear, most importantly that of loyalty.

I was driving around listening to Warren Olney's Which Way L.A.? radio talk show tonight, and there was some friend of Tom Delay's on the air. He was obviously loyal to Delay, and cited his work ethic as an example of his wonderful attributes.

Now, I can't agree more that hard work is a foundation ethic, and admire anyone who devotes themselves to a job, gets in early and leaves late, is thorough and dependable, makes things happen. But when I say it is an abstract quality, that's because the next question we should never forget to answer is, he worked hard for what?

If that hard work is to push us into an unnecessary war, deplete our national treasury to the point where government as we know it cannot function, and subvert the democratic process, then I'd rather he were lazy.

And so it is in Downfall. As the idealistic fantasy world of Hitler collapses, the Russians reaching the Berlin Gates on his birthday, Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler scrambling in vain to make a deal with the Americans, officers sitting around his bunker shoving pistols into their own mouths, we find the "center of good" if there is one to be the secretary, who's innocent loyalty to Hitler is in sharp contrast to the high level rats deserting his sinking ship.

I saw the movie as a metaphor for any evil system into which otherwise decent people have put their faith and allegiance. The fact is that in this world there are leaders and there are followers, and sometimes the leaders are just plain bad. So the "abstract" notion of loyalty isn't enough, it's only the first level of goodness.

What's important is, what or who are you loyal to?

As Ernest Borgnine put it in Sam Peckinpah's epochal film The Wild Bunch, it's not just that you gave your word, "It's who you give it to!"

Now, I'm not saying that Bush and Co. are putting Jews in concentration camps. But they are authoritarian, impunity-free lawbreakers, who hold themselves accountable to basically no one. Given my political bent, I saw Downfall as a potent metaphor for what I hope might happen to this whole power-hungry Administration, and all the Congressional sycophants and other cronies who have hitched their wagon to the charismatic star of this particular President.

Senator Robert Byrd was the first politician I recall to note that our current radical Republican hegemony will not last forever. His floor speeches in the Senate showed the conviction of a man with basic, decent, core values which could no longer be breached by the popularity of a current movement or those in positions of great power.

Nothing lasts forever, and the harder they come, the harder they fall. We'll see how it all plays out, but until then, check out Downfall, and tell me if I'm right; tell me if it resonates.