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  Starring: Julia Jentsch Director: Marc Rothemund | ||||
 | I figured out this gallery. Another version of this review has been submitted to _Liberty_: Over the years, I have become increasingly distrustful of Hollywood’s biographical and historical movies. However, Sophie Scholl: The Last Days was made in Germany and has only recently come to American theaters. Shown with subtitles, the flick received an Oscar nomination for best foreign film earlier this year. Along with her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst, Sophie Scholl was a leading member of the White Rose, a group of students at the University of Munich who began to protest Nazi atrocities during World War Two. At night, they wrote "Down with Hitler" and other slogans on buildings. They also distributed six one-page "leaves" calling on their fellow students to resist the tyranny. The film begins on 17 February 1943, the night before Sophie and Hans distribute the sixth leaf, and ends with her death on 22 February (George Washington’s birthday). Hans and Sophie make the somewhat reckless decision to leave copies of the leaves in the hallways of one of the university’s buildings "in broad daylight." A janitor notices them and starts shouting: "Stop.... You’re under arrest." Most impressive is the care that the filmmakers took to make the film as accurate as possible. Many scenes were shot where the events actually took place. They also found actors who looked like the people they were portraying and even consulted weather reports for those days. Most importantly, the movie is taken from recently discovered transcripts of Sophie’s interrogation. The power and the intensity of this film kept me so focused that I never looked at my watch. The Gestapo agents even appear to have some form of humanity in them. Julia Jentsch was on screen throughout the film and received the German equivalent of an Oscar for her impressive performance of Sophie. I kept watching even though I knew what was going to happen in the end. Hollywood probably would have added violence just for the sake of violence. But this film has none of it. The Nazis always seem calm and cool and are never abusive in any way to the defendants. They never hit, slap, shove, or strike them. The only violence is at the end of the film, and that is handled with great taste. While the Nazis just go through the motions of their jobs, Sophie is a deeply spiritual and passionate 21-year-old. Like all freedom fighters, she sincerely believes in the eventual triumph of good over evil. She worries about her fiancé who was fighting at Stalingrad--which had just been lost after the deadliest battle in history. When she realizes that her fate has been decided, her concern turns toward the welfare of her own family and Christoph Probst, a father of three. The trial is especially memorable. The judge Roland Freisler exemplifies the Nazi fanatic beautifully. He rants and raves and calls the actions of the defendants "terrorist." While previous political prisoners had been given 99 days before execution, the judge orders that Hans, Sophie, and Christoph be killed immediately. "You will stand here...," Sophie tells the judge as they leave the courtroom. (Actually, he died in an air raid in 1945.) The screen goes blank just before the guillotine drops. (Yes, the Nazis used this French method of execution.) Hans shouts, "Long live freedom." The heroes of the White Rose faced their death with a calm that would have made Socrates proud. During that same year, the good did triumph. Three brilliant women in America saw their own books on the importance of liberty go to press. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom appeared the next year as well. And like the White Rose, they all had to deal with a shortage of paper due to rationing. The movie tells many important lessons. The first is that patriotism is always the refuge of scoundrels, as Samuel Johnson had said many years earlier. It demonstrates that an unfree society is always a nation of tattletales--where "good citizens" are reporting on the actions of everyone else to everyone else. It indicates that the Holocaust was little known and that people rarely know what their "leaders" are up to. Finally, it shows that honest German citizens were woefully unarmed and that all tyrants consider private gun ownership a crime. Today, that same university in Munich is home to the Scholl Siblings Institute for Political Science and contains a monument to the heroes. Julia Jentsch called the role "an honor." Sophie Scholl is now remembered as a heroine, a patriot, and a martyr. One disappointment with this movie is that some details are left out. We never learn the fate of Sophie’s fiancé, the rest of the Scholl and Probst families, the janitor who snitched on them, or of the other Gestapo agents. It does tell the fate of some other heroes of the White Rose, but leaves out the little known that the resistance actually did overthrow the Nazis in Munich toward the end of the war after Hitler had ordered the destruction of the city. Upon investigation, I did learn more about the leading members of the White Rose from this web site http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/. One of those heroes was Jürgen Wittenstein. He was the hero went to Ulm and informed the Scholl parents that Hans and Sophie were on trial and were going to die. He somehow managed to evade arrest and was still alive in 2001. A DVD should be released later in the year. Go to www.sophieschollmovie.com for more information. | |||
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