“Downfall” portrays the final days of Hitler and his cohorts as the Allies press in. The German forces are being decimated and Hitler decides on the course of suicide. Bruno Ganz plays him brilliantly, and while the raving Hitler is also there as he clings to the illusion of turning the war around and castigates his generals, we see him as a human being, albeit a warped one.

Some have objected to the idea of portraying him this way, but I have always felt that stereotyped versions of Hitler did a disservice to history. The big lesson that an ordinary person can morph into such a menace is the important one. The guy next door can be capable of villainy. Think the banality of evil. Ganz captures the spectrum of Hitler’s persona, from the fanatic to the human who can dispense small gestures of kindness in the midst of his brutality. This hardly offers any softening of the image. It does make the Nazi leader more observable as a person rather than a myth.

Although two and a half hours long, “Downfall” is mesmerizing for its portrait. It is based upon two books, “Inside Hitler”s Bunker” by Joachim Fest, and “Until the Final Hour,” by Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secretary, and Melissa Müller. There is an eerie sense of doom in the bunker as the end draws closer and as it becomes apparent to Hitler, his ideologues and his entourage that the dream of supremacy that has cost so many lives is crashing in a mass of destruction.

The film depicts the meticulous, chilling preparation by the wife of propagandist Joseph Goebels to murder their children rather than let them grow up in a world without Nazi domination.