Mindless in the bunker

When, three years into the Second World War, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was asked what should be done with Hitler, the answer he gave was stark and direct. "Kill him!". Had they but done so...

Last Sunday, as I watched Downfall in a cinema house in Munich, I had no doubt that the young audience watching the film would have agreed with Stauffenberg. I must admit I went to see the film reluctantly. I had this nagging feeling, from what I had read, that it would turn out to be an attempt to whitewash evil by promoting his human side. I need not have feared. There was no camouflage, nor the slightest attempt at whitewash.

Paradoxically, for me anyway, the humaneness Hitler shows towards his secretaries and his cook, a mad warmth in the context of all the killing that was going on in the real world, his fondness for his dog Blondi, for Eva Braun, merely emphasised the lunatic world in which the inmates of the bunker had their being. Placed against his disregard for millions of Germans, who did not deserve better, he was one day to tell them, his concern for the few is not so much touching as revolting.

Downfall (Der Untergang in the German original) is well made. It tackles that insane period when Hitler, who three years back had achieved at least half his dream of ruling the world with Berlin as its capital, was in his bunker maniacally commanding armies that did not exist, calling on the fragments that did exist to perform miracles that could not be wrought. Scenes in the bunker where Hitler holds forth, throws tantrums and strips Goering of his office and privileges, alternate with others that show the grim reality outside where Berlin is being systematically destroyed.

The director of the film superbly captures the man, played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz, growing old, greying, despair kept at bay by a refusal of his iron will to accept reality, stooping, his left hand in perpetual motion. "You will see," Hitler tells Koller, the chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, "the Russians will suffer the greatest defeat, the bloodiest defeat in their history at the gates of the city of Berlin".

But the Red Army had other things in mind. The words of Marshal Zhukov rang in their ears. He had called on them to remember "the pain and suffering done to our people by Hitler's cannibals" and not to forget "our burnt-out cities and villages; to "remember our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our wives and children tortured to death by Germans... We shall exact a brutal revenge for everything".

History records they did. As history records that Hitler's stubborn attachment to unreality in those last days was indicative of the unhinged state of his mind. Ultimately, the man who loved his dog Blondi and, as the end approached, Eva Braun enough to marry her (but not enough to order a stay of execution on her brother-in-law for which she pleaded in vain), loathed the country he had destroyed, the generals and the soldiers he had sent into battle by the million, and viewed his countrymen with glacial contempt .

Into the preposterous scenario of the bunker steps a district magistrate. He has been called in from some militia unit defending the city to perform the wedding ceremony. But first he has to hear from the Führer and Fräulein Braun, as the law required, that there was not a drop of Jewish blood in them, was there, Mein Führer? And were they free of hereditary diseases? Their honeymoon was to be a suicide party attended only by the host and hostess.

Not to be outdone, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels and his wife decide on the same course of action as that taken by the Führer. Frau Goebbels sees to it that her six children are sedated in order that she may personally see to their death by poison. She then walks out of the bunker with her husband who shoots her before turning the pistol on to himself. Before this gruesome process took place, let it be remembered, Goebbels had tried unsuccessfully to negotiate separately with the Russians, citing as a point in favour the fact that Germany and Russia shared a common holiday on May 1!

I must put the chronological record straight. In this absurd bloodbath and poison-chewing environment it is the faithful Blondi who has to go first. He, too, like his Führer, must not fall into the hands of the Russians. Outside the bunker, the leaderless and the abandoned wait for the terror promised by Zhukov. They do not have long to wait. And throughout Europe, as Winston Churchill so vividly put it, "a vast quivering mass of tormented, hungry, careworn, and bewildered human beings gape at the ruins of their cities and homes, and scan the dark horizons for the approach of some new peril, tyranny or terror".

Outside the cinema house, Munich is grey, as the sickly pallor on Hitler's face was. There is more than a touch of autumn in the air - and, thank God, a taxi in sight.

Dies

You never see a car with a scratch in Germany. The ones on the road all look as if they have just been taken out of the showroom. They belt from traffic light to traffic light as if the devil were in pursuit. If you look closely there are no demons chasing our German drivers, who are the Kings of the Roads and let no pedestrian forget that.

Once on the open road, cars becomes bullets speeding towards their target. This may be anything up to 300 or 400 kilometres away; or a mere 50. More times than is good for them, their drivers do not always reach their destination. The crash is invariably a Teutonically mighty one, the car a write-off requiring replacement; which is why you see no scratches on German cars.

In the Munich city centre I looked left and right so often, a passing psychiatrist may have been tempted to counsel me on the spot. If you happen to be pushing a wheelchair with a convalescing (and impatient) patient in it, life is truly fraught. The pavements are almost wheelchair-friendly but not completely so; there were occasions when I had to take a run at one or two of them to overcome an obstinate half-inch that needed to be scaled by the wheels of the chair. Much huffing and puffing.

Munich is a city of great charm and elegance. There is the sound of church bells coming from the Frauenkirche, or the Alte Pater, or the Heiliggeistkirche, or the Theatinerkirche, throughout the day. When the sun shines down on the place (it only shone once in ten days and then weakly) with its magnificent neo-Gothic City Hall at the Marienplatz, not to mention the handsome and art-full Residenz, seat of the extraordinary Wittelsbachs, the place is a dream. It was badly bombed during the war. The works of art inside it had been 'evacuated' before the bombs fell destroying large areas of the handsome building, including the Antiquarium, an impressive barrel-vaulted room, and the fascinating Grotto of Shells; all was restored by 1958.

Inside the Residenz, among a whole host of creations, you can gape at The Lion Hunt, a swirling mass of baroque violence by Rubens. The painting is held by a diagonal across which two lions seem to have had the better of the hunters. For gentler pleasures, you can look at portraits of the Wittelsbachs all the way from the late 12th century until the end of the First World War. After that, most of the kings and queens in Europe were more or less air-brushed out of history. Roughly 50 years earlier, the Bavarian Ludwig II built himself fairy castles in Linderhof, Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee - and bankrupted the state. We must be grateful to him for that. Any state must be worth bankrupting for these eye-blinding creations. Finally, he had to go, of course.

Und das

Munich is packed with streets and a chessboard of lovely squares. Many of these are named after Maxes and Ludwigs and Josefs - with appropriate bronze statues of them on horseback some of them and, naturally, a Ludwig-Maximillian University. There are fountains and statues everywhere. There are al fresco cafes, chairs whipped out at the drop of a ray of sun. I do not know what happens when the weather becomes bitter and the cold air from Russia hits this lively, lovely city.

The Muncheners who cannot speak English are very few indeed. Add all this and more, like the Kempinski airport hotel which seems to have been carved out of glass, like the choice of restaurants, the elegance of the place and you can see why Munich is becoming more and more international. Pity about the weather while I was there.

There are chic shops with chic people inside them, not so chic shops with not so chic people inside them, beerhouses filled at this time of the year with visitors to the Oktoberfest. This is an annual event that seems to have pot-bellying beer-swilling as its sole purpose; but I suppose there must be more to it than this. I can rattle one off with no trouble at all. The demand for accommodation is so great, hotels raise their prices by a hefty percentage and they are all full. You hear noisy Americans, loud Italians, see imperturbable Japanese, Asians of all description - and, of course, at least two Maltese.

Where there's beer in Munich, there's oompah. The city was filled with the sound of ooompahs and the sight of less pleasing swagger-lager louts. I was therefore more than happy one day to avoid the main square and wander off down the Sendlingerstrasse. There I looked for, and found, the St John Nepomuk Church. It is known as the Asamkirche for the simple and pretty valid reason that it was built between 1733 and 1744 by the Asam brothers, Egid Quirin, a sculptor, and Cosmos Damian, a painter in the illusionist style. Both were trained architects.

The Asamkirche is the best known of their churches. Once inside, it is easy to understand why. The dividing line between real and painted architecture ceases to exist. Within the narrow width of the church, something like nine, ten metres, and within a modest height (that of a four-storey house) the two brothers created an intricate interior where space loses its meaning and the visitor remains awed by a structure in which the baroque is already giving hints of the rococo period that is around the corner.

It was too overpowering not to make a second trip to the place, this time trundling a wheelchair patient for whom I had made the trip to Munich in the first place. Suitably packed with a tranquilliser (let it not be said I ever advertised forbidden goods), I travelled there via Frankfurt and seemed to get there in no time.

Mmmm...

There has not been sufficient time since my return to swot up on what happened while I was away. I am not, therefore, in a position where I can add, or subtract, a thing or two to the information or misinformation system that makes up journalism. A report in last Monday's Times - headlined "Fahrenheit 9/11 breaks Malta cinema trends" - did, however, intrigue me.

I cannot understand how, but I can understand why, for one example and pace the organisers of the Palme d'Or at the last Cannes Film Festival, anybody can possibly describe Moore's film as a documentary. From everything I have read about it, this is manifestly not the case.

Asked by the reporter for her views, a lecturer in video production went further. "The director (of a documentary) clearly has his own agenda and tries to get through to the minds and hearts of people using his own means" "Yes, it's manipulative but then it's up to the viewer to verify what he's seeing. A documentary would only be effective if the director believes in the subject matter - and Moore does this to perfection" (the emphasis is mine).

Given the lecturer's definition, of course he does. Moore's only reason for filming Fahrenheit was to decrease Mr Bush's chances of regaining the White House. He wished to have a chance to persuade five million Americans who may have voted for Mr Bush, or who did not vote at all in 2000, to give their vote to Mr Kerry this time, not to whom he has called "the thief in chief". He has said this publicly (it is a documented fact).

But the director of a documentary ought not to have his own agenda. If he has, he is producing docufiction. He is not providing viewers with a documentary. My definition of a documentary, unsurprisingly, is that to be found in the Concise Oxford: - adj. 1. consisting of documents (documentary evidence); 2. providing a factual record or report - n (a documentary film).

It strikes me as somewhat far-fetched and asking too much of the viewer in the abstract, never mind viewers in their collectivity, to verify what is being shown on the screen when the film's contents are held to belong to the documentary stable. How can members of a mass audience begin to do this? As Dr Sant is wont to say, come on. Fahrenheit 9/11 is simply not a documentary, whatever the Palme d'Or people think or say, whatever the cinema industry in America thinks or says.

It is absurd that this industry should so politicise itself as to ignore, or refuse to acknowledge, the meaning of words. Cunningly, Moore says he would give up his chances for an Oscar if Fahrenheit succeeded in throwing Mr Bush out of the White House. The subliminal implication is that whoever drums up the nominations should not take a bit of blind notice of his feelings and give him an Oscar anyway.

Moore's film may or may not be brilliant. I have yet to see it. Anti-Iraqi war audiences no doubt love it. That is their prerogative. My point is that it is not, and should not be regarded as, a documentary that places objectivity above all things; and to quote The Economist's commentator Lexington, certainly above Moore's outrageous presentation of Saddamite Iraq "as a land of jolly weddings and kite-flying children".