Downfall - Sympathy for the Devil

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I watched Downfall last night. I'm too drunk to analyze properly, but it's a beautiful film, an exploration of the Death Cult that was Nazism. And in the subtlest way, it made heroes of its protagonists, without hiding the crimes they'd committed. Isn't there something about obsession with death that draws from obsession with Life? Explain why pragmatism is the better option, please.

― Amity Wong (noodle vague), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 22:15 (nineteen years ago)

I enjoyed the film up until someone told me that the 'decent' hero doctor was involved with experimentation in the camps. That brought it down with bump. Beautiful but in my opinion too kind to its subjects as it hid their crimes far too well. I can't answer your question because I've not been drinking, work frowns upon that kind of thing sadly.

― Kv_nol (Kv_nol), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 11:05 (nineteen years ago)

Explain why pragmatism is the better option, please.

um, cos it doesn't as often lead to crazy, death-centric politics, etc?

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 11:11 (nineteen years ago)

What I was thinking, watching these horrible people blow their brains out and poison their children, was that this death obsession was a hair's breadth from the health, youth and vigour that was official Nazi ideology. In one way it's totally death-centric, but in another way it reminded me of the Japanese and in particular Bushido and the ideal of the manner of death defining and justifying a life. Our (my) fear of death is as pernicious as its glorification, I think.

One of Nietzsche's (and lets not go near the whole Nietzsche = Nazi thing, okay?) most important critiques of Christianity is that it's a death cult. Its adherents despise life because they think that what is truly important happens after death. (Again we can argue the toss about whether that's what Christianity is about but I'm sorry it seems to me an essential truth of the religion, whether its followers recognise this or not.) Some strains of Marxism are infected with the same bug - the struggle to a Millennial Jerusalem that we won't see. The suicides of the Nazis strike me as being utterly opposed to this.

We can dismiss dismiss dismiss but I think one has to acknowledge what is admirable in Nazism - the ideal for living, the fierce passion for Values - in order to truly oppose it. And as Western politics sinks into a morass of career technocrats and bureaucrats fighting each other over their shared ideological values for no obvious reason, there is something twistedly nostalgic about ideologies that call for a Human (inhuman) Project. Instead of our "sickness and miserable ease", a feeling of purpose.

You might be right and purpose and values lead to Dachau, Henry. But it still bears deep thought.

― Amity Wong (noodle vague), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 12:02 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, i think that's true abt xtianity. a lot of brit followers of nitch (like t.e. hulme and wyndham lewis, the latter a big fan of hitler) sort of re-read xtianity in his light, and came to the conclusion that the real problem was that the faith had degenerated and what was needed was a total alienation of man and god, as obtained before the renaissance -- art would therefore aspire to a perfection impossible in life.

so they made of xtianity something other than a death-cult--life was important because the creation of this perfect, inhuman art was a life-aim.

but i don't agree modern politicians are pragmatists -- if only. they have their millennium too (as did the nazis, didn't they? isn't that what the concept of gotterdamurung is about?) -- in free markets and democracy for all.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 12:14 (nineteen years ago)

i'm annoyed i missed this film. i think they should have shot it like 'assault on precicnt 13' though.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 12:16 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure that the likes of Blair are evangelical about the Market. Some of the policy wonks that program him, probably. Even the Tory party is broader than just out-and-out Free Marketeers, probably because most politicians are too frog stupid to have coherent or consistent ideologies.

I wonder if these people put mental scare quotes around the word democracy when they say it? I get a bitter little mouth twist when I have to use it in its Parliamentary sense.

― Amity Wong (noodle vague), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 12:19 (nineteen years ago)

x post

It's beautifully made, and does use the occasional suspense film shock tactic (one memorable suicide in particular). I don't know if I agree with Kv, the film treats unsympathetic people sympathetically but I didn't forget they were Nazis. I don't think every film about them has to have flashing subtitles going MASS-MURDERING CUNTS all the time.

― Amity Wong (noodle vague), Wednesday, 7 December 2005 12:22 (nineteen years ago)

two months pass...

Did anyone watch this last night? I feel a bit guilty because, to be honest, the strongest response I had to it was rooting for Hitler's pretty young secretary to escape at the end.

― Rotatey Diskers With Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 3 March 2006 11:36 (nineteen years ago)

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