Cogs can think.

I just saw Der Untergang for the first time.

And I cried. Out loud.

This is by far the best film ever made. This is the first ever film that did not depict the high-ranking Nazi officers as brutal monsters with no conscience or emotions - bear with me here before accusing me of Nazi sympathising - they were portrayed as human beings, with human feelings, human emotions, not just as sick killing machines.

And it is that element of humanity that made the sickness ever more apparent.

They were like you, like me. This film makes you realise more than ever that the brutality of the Nazi regime is not something of the past, it’s not something that we can leave behind. It’s not a page we can rip out of our history books, and put away in a sealed envelope on the top shelf of our existence. This is a page that we must always bear with us, a page that we must keep in the back of our heads during our every day decisions, our judgements, our characterisations of other people.

And when we vote.

If there is one thing that Bruno Ganz’s astonishing acting performance makes clear, it’s that there is no reason to assume it will never happen again. The acts of the Nazis were committed by monstrous humans, not by humanly monsters.

Of het ooit terecht is
Dat het een gevecht is
Om gewoon ergens te zijn
Om te wonen en te leven
En al was het ook maar even
Echt een mens te kunnen zijn
En dan los te komen van je plaats en tijd…