Every aggressor has his day, and the day usual ends with disbelief that empire is so fragile a concept. DOWNFALL marks off the last days of Hitler. Too bad the Bush administration couldn’t stay in power long enough for its last days. As the historians say, “The mills of God grind exceedingly slowly but exceedingly fine.” Eva Braun dances on the piano as the chandelier sways to artillery fire. Outgunned commanders try to hold their positions in the city against the tide of the Soviet army. One is ordered to the bunker where he is to be shot for dereliction; but after a hasty conference he is promoted to commander of Berlin. He remarks, “I would rather be shot.”

Gallows humor is bunker humor. Everybody knows the choices are death or fleeing fast enough to try and outrace the enemy at the gates. A good death or a bad death: here life is as short as tomorrow. When you see a movie this intelligent your own thoughts pace the screen. What brings an empire to the bunker is not a simple lesson. The fatal mixture is always grand ideas promoted by men who have no vision for the future save what they would will it to be.

Let’s go into Russia in the winter or let’s go into Iraq in the spring. We’ll build a gulag for our enemies so fearsome that they will bow to us. We’ll torture truth out of them that confirms our assumptions. I couldn’t help thinking through this excellent film that we’re marking time here in America towards the end of our own empire. We’re fighting wars for reasons we can’t define except they are going to stop foreign “terrorism.” Yet all the terrorists we now arrest are living among us.

The economy collapses but the rich are bailed out by the rest of us; and then the rich get even richer making money on the money we lent them. Meanwhile the nation starves. When our enemies become strong enough, all the great visions that put us here will be valueless.

This is an epic movie, and a great movie. What makes it epic? I recently read the remarks of several Spielberg type directors on defining epics. Not one of them got it right. It’s not the special effects or the big scenes. It is the importance: the big themes. DW Griffith had it right, and so do the filmmakers of DOWNFALL.

see the clip_http://www.moviewithme.com/?m=F:124::H:roberto