Coming to a cinematic judgment on Downfall is easy: It's a very fine film. Arriving at an intellectual conclusion in response to its arguments is the tough part.

The film chronicles the last few weeks of the Nazi regime in Germany, as seen from the bunker holding Adolf Hitler and other top figures in his regime.

Veteran Swiss actor Bruno Ganz does a brilliant turn as Hitler.

Some reviewers have criticized the portrayal of Hitler in the film. I'm assuming they presume that a historical villain such as Hitler has to be all monster, all the time.

Why would they consider it a surprise or threat that he was courteous to his secretary and cook and loved his dog?

Not to be trite, but people are complex.

The chilling stuff for me was when he was professing his love for the German people in his last political testament. But when told of the horrors being visited upon civilians in Berlin as the Russian Army battled the Germans for control of the city, Hitler's attitude was basically, "too bad, so sad."

He seemed to view the carnage as a culling of the weak -- and we all know how enthusiastically the Nazis embraced that notion.

In fact, in the film, Hitler had become so detached from reality by the end that he was looking on the collapse of his mad dreams as the German people letting him down (Hey: They gave him a mandate. Hitler was elected). As a result, "I will shed not one tear for them," he ranted.

Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis' propaganda minister, was similarly cold-blooded about the loss of German life.

When a professional soldier implored him to stop sending the Volkssturm (a militia composed of males aged 16 to 60) out to their slaughter, noting they had neither training nor weapons, Goebbels smirked and said they were volunteers.

But that's nothing. Goebbel's wife Magda kills their six darling children (think the Von Trapp kids in The Sound of Music). She was convinced there was no point in living in a world without national socialism.

There are a few characters who keep watch on the madness for the audience.

Traudl Junge is Hitler's young secretary. At one point, she confides that while the Fuehrer can be a nice guy at times, he can then go completely off the rails.

Junge is an actual historical character. To see a documentary about her, check out Blind Spot. A voice track from the real Junge opens the film and footage from the documentary closes it.

Junge, to me, is one of the more troubling characters. In the film, she's portrayed as a basically good-hearted, but naive young woman who goes for a job with Hitler -- despite the warnings of her family -- because, well, he's the Fuehrer!

Do the filmmakers want us to see Junge as typifying the German people of that time -- they just stumbled along for the ride? After all, this is a German film made for a German audience.

Prof. Ernst-Gunther Schenk, an internist, provides a voice of humanity and reason in the face of psychopathic coldness and fanaticism. But from what I've read, Prof. Schenk's film character has been morally burnished for the purpose of narrative. Let us not forget the man was an SS (Schutzstaffel) officer -- the true believers of the Nazi regime.

Another character, SS General Wilhelm Monke, was essentially portrayed as a Teutonic Tom Hanks from Saving Private Ryan. But according to some reports, he was responsible for the  murders of British prisoners of war at Dunkirk in 1940.

Again: Both those characters are among the more sympathetic in the movie, but there is nothing to hint of their darker sides.

This is where I really start to wonder where writer-producer Bernd Eichinger and director Oliver Hirschbiegel are trying to lead us.

If you want another example, a young boy named Peter is a fanatical member of the Hitler Youth (there were some definite true believers in that gang). He is personally decorated by Hitler for destroying two Russian tanks.

As an additional reward, he found some of his friends dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds and his parents murdered by Nazi vigilantes.

Everyone was victimized by the Nazis, it seems -- even the true believers. Or should it be especially the true believers?

Downfall mostly works as a movie in terms of capturing the madness of the time and place. It could benefit from some judicious editing to pick up the pace slightly.

But I have real problems with how it tries to lay blame for the crimes of Nazi Germany on a relatively small group while portraying the rest of the German people as dupes and victims.

All great propaganda has at least some truth to it.

It would be interesting to get an honest answer from Eichinger and Hershbiegel to this question: In an attempt to make a captivating movie, did you veer too closely towards propaganda? Or was propaganda the primary goal all along?

Remember, Leni Riefenstahl considered Triumph of the Will to be a documentary, not propaganda.