I have yet to see Downfall, though my dad has, and he loved it.

Downfall is brilliant. I'm not much of a war movie aficionado (I usually prefer stuff like Jarhead and Full Metal Jacket) but Downfall does so many things that I love-- it's meticulously historically accurate, presented in the style of cinema verite, it humanizes traditionally demonized figures without excusing them one iota, it features, seriously, every third or fourth German actor I've ever liked, and it has a wonderful pall of bleakness over it: from the start, it's clear that everyone is fucked-- most of the characters spend the film saying, "Shit! I've spent so long mindlessly following orders I've forgotten how to disobey them, even when they're clearly both suicidal and pointless."

I found Tom Cruise's statement about his Hitler-killing fantasies a tad deranged.

I missed that.

One of the things that people do wrong with Nazis, particularly in what-if-Hitler-had-won-the-war speculative fiction is lose sight of how hideously dull and bureaucratic living in a totalitarian state is aside from the odd midnight raid for dissidents to ship off to the death camps. I mean, can you imagine what it would be like to live in a place where someone like, say, John Ashcroft controlled everything you were allowed to read and all the music you were allowed to listen to?

There's a fairly good book called Fatherland by Robert Harris (who also wrote the superior WWII-connected espionage thrillers Enigman and Archangel) which tackles the what-if-Hitler-won question without accidentally glamorizing the Nazis. It's set in the sixties and, since the Jews have all been gotten rid of, Hitler has shifted to blaming all of societies problems on the perfidious influence of gays. Society has gradually liberalized, though it's still frightfully uptight-- jazz music, for instance, is allowed, but only special jazz "purged of negroid influences" which, according to the book's description, sounds lifeless and staid, possessing none of the dynamism of proper jazz.

For some reason those details stuck in my head after I read the book.

I do love Bruno Ganz, as he's the go-to actor for practically every German film. War films aren't generally to my taste, either, though it depends (I loved Casualties of War but seeing it once was enough). Your description of it is enough to convince me to see it; something that most historical films have a habit of doing when depicting figures such as Hitler is to either have them as evil and monstrous as possible, or almost sympathetic and to a degree, buffoonish.

I hate to link you to a gossip site: http://justjared.buzznet.com/2009/01/19/tom-cruise-ive-always-wanted-to-kill-hitler/
He could just be referring to his views a child, but if he still feels that way now, he just comes off as a little too simplistic. Or perhaps it's just my bias against him coming out.

Nazis and the like have been over-romanticized and mythologized to an insane degree, when what's truly horrifying about all of them is that they were regular people. To read original publications from that time, you just see Hitler and Goebbels at dinner parties and shaking hands with children; it's the banality of evil. They wielded great power for sinister purposes, but were totally average. It would be a mundane existence and many people would likely allow themselves to fall into a simple life of routine. It'd be easy for one to make claims of what'd they'd do in such a society, but we'd never truly know unless we lived through it.

I believe I have heard of Fatherland before, but as I'm always into finding films and books, I will have to add it to my list. I've been reading non-fiction for so long that I greatly appreciate finding rewarding, well-written fiction.

I do love Bruno Ganz, as he's the go-to actor for practically every German film. War films aren't generally to my taste, either, though it depends (I loved Casualties of War but seeing it once was enough).

Bruno Ganz was great in Nosferatu. Have you seen it?

Oh, would you consider Jacob's Ladder a war film, per se? Probably not.

He could just be referring to his views a child, but if he still feels that way now, he just comes off as a little too simplistic. Or perhaps it's just my bias against him coming out.

Nah, you're right. He sounds asinine.

Nazis and the like have been over-romanticized and mythologized to an insane degree, when what's truly horrifying about all of them is that they were regular people. To read original publications from that time, you just see Hitler and Goebbels at dinner parties and shaking hands with children; it's the banality of evil. They wielded great power for sinister purposes, but were totally average. It would be a mundane existence and many people would likely allow themselves to fall into a simple life of routine.

I hate to namedrop thirty different things in one comment, but you really ought to read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night.

Something that particularly aggravates me about the way Nazis have been turned into villainish caricatures-- people so overtly evil that, like Tom Cruise says, why didn't somebody just kill them? is that it seems to me that it trains people to look for governments with big "I'M EVIL" signs hanging from their foreheads. We could learn from the whole Nazi thing to be suspicious of leaders who come on with the, "You're under attack, and the only way to survive is to give me more power!" routine, but, instead, we've learned only to look out for people who seem obviously maniacal.

I believe I have heard of Fatherland before, but as I'm always into finding films and books, I will have to add it to my list. I've been reading non-fiction for so long that I greatly appreciate finding rewarding, well-written fiction.

It's pretty decent, as I remember it. I'd suggest Mother Night first, though.

I apologize for getting back to you so late!

I still have yet to see Herzog's remake of Nosferatu, even though it has Bruno and one of my all-time favorites, Klaus Kinski. I'm still bothered by Herzog's shitty treatment of Abel Ferrara and that version (or as Herzog called it, sequel) of Bad Lieutenant.

We could learn from the whole Nazi thing to be suspicious of leaders who come on with the, "You're under attack, and the only way to survive is to give me more power!" routine, but, instead, we've learned only to look out for people who seem obviously maniacal.

Definitely. It's such a simplistic viewpoint; it's like the general response from my classmates in high school sincerely questioning, "Why didn't someone just killer Hitler?"
I can understand how the events in WWII can seem incomprehensible and how the absolute outrage and disgust can lead one to that line of thinking, but eventually, has to (or should) grow out of such black and white thinking, as it does us no favors.

I hate to namedrop thirty different things in one comment, but you really ought to read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night.

I absolutely should and will get to it when possible.

Here's Goebbels and Hitler as promised:

I feel terrible for saying that I love this picture, but I do because of the real life horror and absurdity of it. Did they decide to dress similarly? Was Hitler not terribly fond of these little gatherings, judging by his constant discomfort in pictures from them? Goebbels is so goddamned pleased with life and then there's that guy in the back, in the glasses, ignoring his conversation to get in on the photograph. Maria, it must be noted, did very well for herself during this time, primarily performing Wagner's works.
I couldn't fit all of the page on the copier, so some of the text is cut off, but hopefully, it doesn't deter from the perverse enjoyment of the picture. I've noticed that German publications from the time period never called Hitler by name, just Der Führer, which makes it funnier to me.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Woah! Is that really him? He looks so different when he's not scowling!

After discussing it with you, I checked out the film version of Mother Night again, for the first time in some time. Goebbels makes a bit appearance, played by a guy you probably know as Edward Norton's boss from Fight Club. He's okay-- no complaints on my part. It's only a little dinky cameo, though, so real nuance isn't required.

Here's a link to the trailer, by the way: http://videodetective.com/TitleDetails.aspx?publishedid=00005002

The film is in no way a replacement for the book, but, it should be noted, it's one of the few Vonnegut film adaptations that hasn't made me puke in my mouth.

When Goebbels was out and about, it seemed as though he was having a great time. This one is the first I found when opening up Die Woche:

I joked that the magazine would be filled with Nazis, and there he was. Everyone looks so delighted! The guy in front seems to be a bit shy.

And laughing it up:

The headline from that page was Reichstheater Festwoche in München.

I generally avoid film adaptations of books, but that trailer and the cast look promising.

It's actually pretty bloody good. Not exceptional, but it does a good job of taking what made the book good and putting it onscreen, and also with imbuing it with a bit of life of its own. The movie loses some of its punch and weirdness with the mostly chronological storytelling (the book was a bit Slaughterhouse Five-y in that regard-- jumping hither and yon), though. Kirsten Dunst is virtually unrecognizable; I saw it twice before I realized who she was, in the film.

Wow. Okay; as you can imagine, most of the photos I'd seen of Goebbels were of him with that "I NEVER EXPERIENCE JOY BECAUSE IT WOULD BE UNPROFESSIONAL" expression. I think I would have been an awful Nazi, by the way, at least outside of taking joy in dressing snappily.

The thing with the Goebbels children is one of those things that I can't think about without becoming at least a little upset.

I like to poke fun at Nick Nolte every now and then, but he is an impressive actor; I also can't resist watching John Goodman (I'll love him forever for Roseanne and his work with the Cohen brothers). I have far too many films and books to get to, but I'll gladly add Moth Night to the list.

The fact that he had such influence over film is still a bit of a shock to me, as I have time thinking of any of them enjoying anything, let alone having an eye for art. Apparently he was considered to be on the 'left' side of the Nazi party because he admired the Russians and some aspects of Communism.

The death of the Goebbels children is extremely unnerving, and I'm sure I've said it before, but going through those magazines and seeing all these children and young people bothers me because they were being indoctrinated and enlisted to support and fight for a future that never happened. By the end, they were dead or damaged.

Call me naive, but I had no idea that Triumph of the Will was available on DVD until just now looking it up. And the poster is available on moviegoods.com, with suggestions that I might be interested in posters for the Ilsa films and Profondo Rosso.