Sophie Scholl - The Final Days (DVD)

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Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends, Christophe Probst, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorling, were mostly medical students (Sophie was a student of philosophy and biology) at Ludwigs-Maximilians Universität München (Ludwig-Maximilian University). Together with their philosophy professor, Kurt Huber, they formed the core group of a loose, underground resistance movement that distributed leaflets critical of the Nazi government ...
...18 February 1943, Hans and Sophie decided to take a bolder and much more dangerous step in their consciousness-raising: they would put out the latest leaflet in the daytime, in the halls of the university. It is Sophie’s last-minute gesture (due either to ‘high spirits or stupidity’, as Sophie Scholl is supposed to have explained it later) before they hurriedly try to blend in with the students pouring out of the classrooms that will ... more

The war was going very badly by then. More and more citizens became disillusioned with their leader and his policies. Dissent continued to be strongly, even ruthlessly, forbidden. Quietly and fearfully, most people carried on with their lives, averting their frightened gaze from the black menace that had become their government, and perhaps from its crimes. Meantime, a war waged purportedly against an antithetical belief system had already lost any hope for victory, after having swallowed far too many lives in its bloody maw, and yet continued unabated.

Of course, no one here is referring to the USA, circa 2007, silly. These words merely describe Germany in the Third Reich, circa 1943, at the time of the Wehrmacht’s disastrous defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad. The declared internal and external enemy of the Nazis were the Communists, or ‘Bolshevists’.

Against this context unfolds the smaller yet enormously significant events recounted in this recent German film. ‘Sophie Scholl: the Final Days’ (‘Sophie Scholl: Die letzten Tage’, 2005) is a gripping and intensely moving chronicle of the last few days of the young German university student who, with her brother, Hans, and friend, Christophe, was swiftly tried by a kangaroo Nazi court and executed by guillotine.

The story of their anti-Nazi underground movement, The White Rose, would soon grow to such proportions to transcend the specific time and place that bore witness to it. While their activities would not attain their hoped-for ends even after their deaths, the protagonists today embody a powerful symbol of courageous civilian resistance against repressive regimes everywhere.

THE WHITE ROSE

Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends, Christophe Probst, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorling, were mostly medical students (Sophie was a student of philosophy and biology) at Ludwigs-Maximilians Universität München (Ludwig-Maximilian University). Together with their philosophy professor, Kurt Huber, they formed the core group of a loose, underground resistance movement that distributed leaflets critical of the Nazi government between June 1942 and February 1943.

Among other things, the leaflets categorically stated the major crimes of the Nazis, specifically those perpetrated against the Jews and occupied peoples in the East. (It’s said that the leaflet mentioning such atrocities appears to be the earliest documented awareness of the Nazis’ methodical mass murder of the Jews). With early quotations from Schiller, Goethe and Lao Tzu, the documents (sent to randomly selected names across the whole of Germany, as well as the German intelligentsia) exhorted its readers to wake up from their apathetic slumber and engage in passive resistance against the tyrannical regime. This, it stated, they must do lest the German people be ‘hated and rejected by all mankind’ (from the Fifth Leaflet). The initial leaflets were prepared by Hans Scholl and Alex Schmorling, and designated as ‘Leaflets of the White Rose’ (Flugblätter der Wießen Rose), although the members never really referred to themselves as 'The White Rose'.

THE FATEFUL DISTRIBUTION OF THE SIXTH LEAFLET

Until then, the White Rose had been conducting their anti-Nazi campaign under cover of anonymity (mailing out leaflets to various people across Germany) and darkness (scrawling with tar potent slogans like ‘Down with Hitler !', ‘Freedom !’ and ‘Hitler Mass Murderer’, as well as crossed-out swastikas on the building walls along Munich’s Ludwigstraße).

However, on 18 February 1943, Hans and Sophie decided to take a bolder and much more dangerous step in their consciousness-raising: they would put out the latest leaflet in the daytime, in the halls of the university. It is Sophie’s last-minute gesture (due either to ‘high spirits or stupidity’, as Sophie Scholl is supposed to have explained it later) before they hurriedly try to blend in with the students pouring out of the classrooms that will land the siblings directly into the hands of the Gestapo.

THOSE FINAL DAYS

Even if one knew nothing about the Scholls and their White Rose movement, the film’s title already tells us of the Scholls’ fate -- we know at once that they would pay for their bravery with their lives.

And so we watch with increasing anxiety as Hans and Sophie nervously set down stacks of the Sixth Leaflet on the corridors and steps of the multi-storied university building on that fateful day. We then witness with dread as the Gestapo agents and Nazi authorities arrest and interrogate them, and hold a ludicrous show trial in the People’s Court at the Munich Rathaus. The presiding judge was the raving lunatic, Roland Freisler (André Hennicke), who harangued the three accused throughout their trial, such as it was. Since Freisler was also known as ‘Hitler’s hanging judge’, the death sentences he meted out to the Scholls and Probst would not come as a surprise.

Amid the horrible circumstances, one finds a measure of comfort in the person of a sympathetic cellmate, Else Gebel (Johanna Gastdorf), during Sophie’s last few days. A political prisoner herself working at the Gestapo Prison, Else was ordered to keep Sophie company so as to prevent her from committing suicide. Their friendship would deepen quickly, and the film recreates with accuracy and drama Else’s personal account of those few, unforgettable days spent with an amazingly calm and brave young woman facing imminent death.

THE FILM

The film’s simple, unhysterical and straightforward narrative and eschewing of the usual Hollywood tricks (such as the abuse of weepy, manipulative music) only heightens the emotional intensity of the story. Careful attention to detail in the performances gives the film a taut and authentically perilous atmosphere. One will scarcely be able to hold back the tears during the heartrending last reunion of Sophie with Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) and Christophe (Florian Stetter), and with her parents Magdalena (Petra Kelling) and Robert (Jörg Hube). One cannot imagine the extreme anguish felt by the elder Scholls at this time, when they are about to lose two of their children at once to the guillotine.

The entire cast deliver excellent work, but Julia Jentsch (who resembles the real Sophie Scholl to a remarkable degree) gives an especially persuasive, understated performance as the eponymous character and ably carries most of the film on her shoulders. One sees Sophie’s inner strength, resolve and innocence in Ms Jentsch’s soft yet steady gaze, and her portrayal radiates a touchingly naïve courage and humanity.

SOPHIE SCHOLL AND JEANNE D’ARC

Most compelling to this viewer were those quiet scenes of Sophie in her cell looking out the window at the sunny sky with hands clasped tightly as she whispers prayers to her God; those sessions with Mohr in which she clearly ‘won’ the arguments; and those few moments when her stoic exterior gives way fleetingly to despair. These sequences strongly recalled the intelligence, courage and humanity of another brave woman whose similarly short life predated Sophie Scholl’s by several centuries: Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), as vividly recreated in the film by French director Jacques Rivette, 'Jeanne la Pucelle' (copy and paste in URL window: http://www.angelfire.com/wv2/pathgirl/jeanne.html), and in a similar film by Robert Bresson (copy and paste in URL window: http://dvd.ciao.co.uk/The_Trial_Of_Joan_Of_Arc_Subtitled_Wide_Screen__Revie w_5568243).

Was it mere coincidence, or did director Marc Rothemund and writer Fred Breinersdorfer intentionally draw visual and atmospheric parallels between these two women who were martyred for their respective beliefs ? The viewer cannot be faulted for regarding Sophie Scholl as a modern saint, but by most accounts the version given here apparently strays little from the real-life Scholl.

BRAVERY, CONSCIENCE AND...HEROISM ?

The unusual courage of these young people of the White Rose (all were in their early twenties) who knew fully well that a slip-up with the Gestapo would mean certain death still astounds one today -- perhaps more so. Alexander Schmorling, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber would meet a similar end as the Scholls and Probst’s later that year. Their manifestos as set out in their leaflets startle with their remarkably visionary assertions, and could very well serve as templates for enlightened and progressive governments and societies today.

What differed from the usual here is the absence of a political ideology inspiring these students. After prolonged questioning that brings out inconsistencies in her alibis, and incriminating evidence collected from the Scholl apartment, Sophie finally owns up to printing and distributing the leaflets -- but she refuses to admit that her actions were wrong.

Gestapo investigator Robert Mohr (Alexander Held) attempts to show her the criminality of her deeds, invoking Nazi law as his basis. At one point, he asks her what would happen to society if laws did not exist – what should people be guided by then? Her simple and direct answer: ‘Conscience.’ She felt that she could no longer stand by and do nothing on learning of the terrible acts carried out by the National Socialists. These included, to wit, the euthanasia of disabled children and the elderly, the murder of Jews and other selected groups, and the prolongation of a war that was already lost, and for which more German lives would be sacrificed as part of the new Nazi declaration of ‘total war’. Sophie Scholl’s Christian beliefs formed the core of her conscience, as they did for Hans and their friends (which puts the lie to and utterly shames those bogus, un-Christianlike beings who comprise that shrill and intolerant, extreme right-wing, so-called ‘Christian’ segment in this country).

Especially noteworthy, too, are the unconventional thoughts on the concept of ‘heroism’ separately expressed by Elisabeth, a sister of the Scholls, and a surviving member of the White Rose (seen in the Special Features interviews). Both do not consider the actions of the Scholls and company as necessarily ‘heroic’. Neither do they agree with labelling them as ‘heroes’. No, both individuals stated that the White Rose members did what they did simply because it was their moral duty to do so as citizens with a Christian conscience.

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Excerpts from the White Rose Leaflets:

From the Second Leaflet:

The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so. Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake? It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals, if he shows no sympathy for these hundreds of thousands of victims. He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behaviour he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty! It is not too late, however, to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government, so as to avoid being burdened with even greater guilt.

* * * * *

From the Sixth and final Leaflet:

Freedom and honour! For ten long years Hitler and his coadjutor have manhandled, squeezed, twisted, and debased these two splendid German words to the point of nausea, as only dilettantes can, casting the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated in the ten years of destruction of all material and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance among the German people, what they understand by freedom and honour. The frightful bloodbath has opened the eyes of even the stupidest German - it is a slaughter which they arranged in the name of "freedom and honour of the German nation" throughout Europe, and which they daily start anew. The name of Germany is dishonoured for all time if German youth does not finally rise, take revenge, and atone, smash its tormentors, and set up a new Europe of the spirit.

* * * * *

And from the Fourth Leaflet, concluding paragraph, which became the White Rose’s motto:

'Wir schweigen nicht, wir sind Euer böses Gewissen; die Weiße Rose läßt Euch keine Ruhe !

[We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace !]'

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