Shakespeare would have struggled to forge a drama packing as much sheer emotion as the last days of World War II in Hitler's Bunker.

There's a family suicide pact, debauched hi-jinks as the shells are falling, the ever-closer menace of a vengeful Red Army and even an ill-fated wedding.

German film-makers have fought shy for decades of dealing with their recent past, particularly the pitch black totalitarian days of Nazism.

Director Oliver Hirshbiegel had the courage to grasp the nettle…and his epic dramatisation of the 12 days that ended Hitler's 12-year tyranny is a cinematic triumph.

Broad in scope yet never losing its focus, it follows the progress of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge (Maria Lara) as she stayed loyal to the Fuhrer to the final shot.

Central to the movie's success is a towering portrayal by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, who captures Hitler's crumbling stature fed by paranoid delusions of the Reich's invincibility.

Strutting jackbooted through the warren of tunnels beneath a blitzed Berlin are a veritable who's who of genocidal villainy - Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler and Albert Speer.

However, it is propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels - played as an evily animated cadaver by Ulrich Matthes - who hints at the darkness of the soul of National Socialism.

The scene where his equally fanatical wife warps her maternal instincts to adminster poison to their six children rather than let them live in a world without Nazism has be one of the most harrowing in recent memory.

Hirshbiegel realises that a story of this power doesn't need clever editing or cinematic tricks and his sober, unvarnished approach conveys the hellish insanity of Hitler's last days.

Away from the bunker, other sub-plots unravel - a decent SS colonel helps out at makeshift hospital and a former Hitler Youth realises the pointlessness of fighting on.

All the time, through the rubble-strewn streets, SS death squads are hunting down anybody they suspect might by a deserter and hanging them from lampposts.

Desperate human stories - big and small - are expertly marshalled by Hirshbiegel and the result is one of the most mesmerising dramas of the year. Superlative film-making.

Tim Evans