And he could have walked just another 500 meters or a kilometer and gone over the ‘green border.’ The things he had with him were because he needed evidence that he was the man behind the assassination. He had no knowledge of the Nazis really controlling the border. Like everything was prepared in such a thorough way it’s hard to believe he didn’t have help from anybody. OH: It’s like Raskolnikov isn’t it? It’s like anybody who creates a ‘perfect plan’ seems to have some flaw in it. Were you surprised that he could do this elaborate bombing all by himself? Watching it as a movie we think he’s not a very good fugitive. Q: You introduce him trying to cross the border into Switzerland where the Nazis stop him and find all this incriminating material with him. At least that’s what the relatives told me. But I had enough to put one and one together, an image that I think is very close to the truth. He was a working class man so there’s not as much information about this person than the other famous Nazis. There were certain personal aspects of his life that we just don’t know that I, to a certain extent, had to force a little. We didn’t really invent anything for DOWNFALL which is based on accounts - and the same thing with Elser. OH: Most of it is true but so is DOWNFALL. How much is really true and what was invented? Q: There’s a documentary-like feel to what we see happening. Review: Ordinary German tries to kill Hitler in ‘13 Minutes’.So in a way if there is another good script it might become a trilogy, yeah. But when I finally read the new draft I wanted to do the film and while doing it I realized, ‘Of course! This is connected.’ DOWNFALL is the last chapter of the Nazis while Elser’s story is a very early one. I was approached a couple of times and I had turned it down because I didn’t want to go back into the Third Reich. OH: This came more out of the blue really. Q: Now that you’ve done DOWNFALL and 13 MINUTES, are you planning a WWII Nazi-themed trilogy? Hirschbiegel, in flawless English on the phone from Vienna, discussed Elser, his capture, historical accuracy, the response in Germany where 13 MINUTES has already played and the difficulty in presenting torture. As we know even if we’ve never heard of this attempt the explosion missed Hitler - by just 13 minutes when weather changed his plans. He believed a dead Hitler would stop WWII. A carpenter and womanizer Elser all by himself constructed an intricate bomb loaded with stolen dynamite timed to kill Germany’s Fuhrer as he spoke at a Munich rally on November 8, 1939. Now the director is back with 13 MINUTES (in Germany it’s title is ELSER), a docu-like portrait of Georg Elser (played by Christian Friedel). Germany’s Oliver Hirschbiegel scored internationally with the 2004 Oscar nominated DOWNFALL, a riveting docu-like portrait of Adolf Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker.
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