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SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE LAST DAYS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The new German-language film SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE LAST DAYS tells the powerful and moving true story of the arrest, interrogation, and trial of an anti-government student activist in Nazi Germany from her last day of freedom. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
In World War II Germany, White Rose was a relatively small and secret organization mostly composed of students who after the battle of Stalingrad felt the war was lost for Germany. They tried to convince others that Hitler had to be removed as a step toward ending the war. The merciless German government quickly eliminated them. Central to White Rose had been Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister who wrote and distributed anti- government leaflets. SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE LAST DAYS is just what the title indicates.
Sophie, when we see her, seems a typical young Munich woman, one who enjoys American music. At the same time she works within White Rose, of which we see only little in the film. Sophie speaks of wanting to ignite the campus in protest. However, when Sophie is seen distributing leaflets she is quickly arrested on a charge of treason and of troop demoralization. The film follows her interrogation and the events that follow. Sophie at first tries to claim innocence. When that fails she tries to take full responsibility to save her brother, then to save her friends. Her interrogator is Robert Mohr (Fabian Hinrichs) efficiently finds the truth. Mohr is a strange man with bow tie, a party pin, and affected mannerisms in the precise way he holds a cigarette. Under Marc Rothemund's direction the viewer looks for some humanity and sympathy in Mohr, but we are never sure if we see it. Julia Jentsch as Sophie also gives a very controlled performance, bottling her emotions with her interrogator and nearly as much with her cellmate who purports to be prisoner because she is a communist.
Michael Verhoeven's 1983 film WHITE ROSE told the story of the organization up to the arrest of the Scholls. SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS is a sort of complement to that film, telling mostly what happened after the arrest. In 1983 the script details of the interrogation Scholl would have been a matter of speculation. However, in 1943 the methodical Germans made a detailed transcript of the interrogation. Those records were stored in what became the Communist sector and were never made available until the end of Soviet control. Now that the transcripts are available a more accurate picture of the interrogation is possible. The interrogation passages are reportedly taken directly from those transcripts. That adds authenticity and still makes for intriguing drama with a dialog of ideas. These are the best moments of the film. Where possible the authentic sites were used for the recreation. Another German film, THE LAST FIVE DAYS (1982), may have covered much the same material as this film, but I am not aware of any United States release.
The telling of the story is restrained with no blood or physical mistreatment. Any abuse is intellectual or at least verbal. The score by Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil pulsates when tension is needed and is contemplative when that is called for. Photography director Martin Langer opens the film out with external shots when he can use them in the early parts of the film to counterbalance the claustrophobic scenes after the arrest.
When people think of the evils of Nazi Germany the first set of victims they think of are the Jews. Statistically that makes sense. Of eleven million people murdered in the Holocaust, six million were Jews. But SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE LAST DAYS is one of the rare anti-Nazi films that does not focus on the Jews or even the Holocaust. It focuses on courageous students who opposed Hitler and the war. Framing Nazi oppression as just a part of Jewish history casts it adrift from the rest of humanity and is the first step of first minimizing it and then denying it. It is important to remember what Nazism did to the German people to understand that experience. Parallels to other totalitarian and tyrannical regimes will be obvious.
Sophie Scholl's courage and personal morality in standing up to the evil and the force of the Third Reich make this film a moving experience. I rate SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
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