Junge, detained in Russia for a period at the end of World War II before finding work as a magazine editor, treats the unseen Heller like a priest; one might say that her regret drives the piece, resulting in not a lurid film about Hitler (which has disappointed those critics out for something pulpier), but a deathbed soliloquy. (Junge passed away in 2002.) Punishing herself for going off on "banal" tangents that conjure lucid images of Hitler's squalid bunker (Blind Spot's structural conceit finds Junge judging the playback of comments she previously made), she recounts in linear detail the beginning of the end, so to speak. Quoting the moment wherein Junge says that to be Hitler's secretary--an automaton, not a confidante--was to live oblivious to his master plan ("Every explosion has an area of calm," Junge expounds--there are, to paraphrase, blind spots where you least expect them), the title Blind Spot thus describes an absolution: the film becomes a platform by which she can purge herself of the guilt she has carried with her since learning of the Holocaust sometime after the war.

Junge's account of Hitler's last days, constituting Blind Spot's final third, unfolds in an entrancing, unbroken take. She speaks oddly wistfully of a limbo that accompanied the creeping realization that victory was beyond Germany's grasp: meals became a time for dispassionate discussion of effective methods of suicide, while an increasingly paranoid Hitler had taken to executing loved ones with alarming frequency, including his dog. Junge remains angry that Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun chose to kill themselves together, an act she perceived then as one of abandonment (her raison d'être was meeting the Führer's needs), but "now" resents for its cowardice. Junge emerges from this closing passage a Henry Hill figure unsure of how to resolve her youthful nostalgia with her youthful naiveté. Her blind spot in senectitude prevents her from seeing her ultimate innocence, though we are reassured in a post-script that her last words to the filmmakers were, "I'm starting to forgive myself." Winnowed down from ten hours of raw material to a crisp ninety minutes, Blind Spot is a stark yet heartbreaking documentary of astonishing restraint.-Bill Chambers