A new movie providing a controversially intimate portrait of the Adolf Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker has received a standing ovation at its debut in Germany. At the gala premiere in Munich last Thursday producer Bernd Eichinger said his aim was to avoid simply demonizing Hitler, and director OIiver Hirschbiegel argued it was time for a film documenting the Nazis from a German perspective. "These were people and not robots, not schizophrenic, but people with an incredibly destructive insanity," Eichinger said.
The film, based on the memoirs of Hitler's secretary, has drawn praise but critics are also raising the question of whether Hitler should be portrayed as human at all, particularly in a German-made movie. They say the new film glosses over the broader historical context, including the Holocaust, in favor of what one called 'Hollywood-style drama'. "The question of what situation a person like Hitler was in during the last days of April 1945 may be interesting, but it contributes little to history," the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said.
