Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)
Sophie Scholl - The Final Days: Historical drama. Starring Julia Jentsch,
Alexander Held and Fabian Hinrichs. Directed by Marc Rothemund. (Not rated. 117
minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
“Sophie Scholl — The Final Days” is a best foreign film Academy Award nominee from Germany,
about an idealistic student who was executed in 1943 for handing out anti-Nazi
leaflets at the University of Munich. Sophie’s ultimate fate is never in
question — it’s guaranteed in the title, which invites us to watch the movie
in something other than the usual way. The film holds us rapt not through
narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound
moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil.
The film is based on recently unearthed transcripts of Scholl’s
interrogation and trial, as well as interviews with people who knew her or
knew of her in her last days. In this way, it bears a family resemblance to
Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” also about a religious young woman
being put through the bureaucratic machinery of murder. Stylistically, the
movie bears no relationship to the Dreyer film, except for one running visual
reference — a shot of the untroubled sky, from the condemned woman’s
perspective.
Director Marc Rothemund chooses instead to be self-effacing, and he makes
a virtue of that choice. Rather than adopt a Dreyer-like strategy of dramatic
close-ups and dreamlike compositions, Rothemund gently inflects the story,
providing humanizing touches and delicate nudges in moments of peak drama.
Mainly he gets out of the way and lets two things tell the story — the
narrative record, which is clinical; and actress Julia Jentsch’s face, which is
a study in contained passion.
Like Joan of Arc, Scholl combines a visionary worldview with a young
person’s naivete. She and other members of her dissident group, the White Rose,
operate under the romantic delusion that, through leaflets, they can inspire a
student uprising that will topple the government. They think ideas and
information alone can dislodge fascists, when it usually takes the addition of
things like tanks and bombs. At the same time, she has a shrewd awareness of
the world situation, and her conception of the future — which includes
Germany’s defeat and war-crime tribunals for Nazi leaders — couldn’t be
more prescient.
At the center of the film is Scholl’s interrogation by Robert Mohr, a Nazi
functionary who is no intellectual match for the young woman. He is a man from
a humble background, whose loyalty to the regime stems from the opportunities
it has afforded him. In his aspirations for himself and his country, he is an
unambitious man, and he can’t help but see Sophie as a privileged troublemaker.
But he also sees her as a kid, and without saying so actor Alexander Held
conveys that he feels sorry for her. He is not evil but rather a man on a small
scale flummoxed to encounter a grand spirit. Held’s is the second extraordinary
performance in “Sophie Scholl.”
In the end, the film leaves audiences with a lingering question, “Was
Sophie Scholl’s sacrifice in vain or not?” At several points, she is given a
chance to take a lesser sentence, and she chooses not to. Did Scholl’s act form
some kind of breach in the monolith of authority, or was it just the waste of
young and promising life? That will be the opening gambit of every dinner
conversation destined to follow screenings of “Sophie Scholl.”
– Advisory: This is hardly a children’s movie, but there’s nothing that
can’t be seen by children.
E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.