Terrence Malick’s film means to seek out souls caught in the tide of history, but which move against its current.
The film is a provocative WWII screed that almost deliberately goes out of its way to avoid sentimentality or bathos of any sort.
Downfall challenges us not to derive schadenfreude from watching the Germans in the film getting flushed down the toilet.
The film conveys a chilling vision of rats being slowly flushed down a toilet.