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Topic: Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl - The Last Days)
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-20-2006 10:33 AM
I read some pretty amazing reviews of this film, which compared it favourably to Downfall; but it only had a very limited theatrical release in Britain and I couldn't make it during the film's three-day booking at my local arthouse.
IMHO the film almost worked but not quite, mainly because the performances didn't work for me - I just didn't find them convincing. As its title suggests, the film dramatises the interrogation and trial of the leader of the anti-Nazi resistance movement, one of a tiny handful of people who have actively campaigned against Hitler in Germany during the war (biographical info is on her Wikipedia page). Julia Jentsch's portrayal of Scholl was rather cold and detached. Her lines were delivered in a flat and wooden way and, to sum it up, I had a hard time trying to believe that a 21 year-old woman who had previously led a relatively sheltered life and was facing imminent execution could appear that calm and detached.
The performance of the judge who convicted her was at the opposite extreme. His rabid shouting and screaming made me think that no-one that irrational could become a judge, even under the Nazis - but according to his Wikipedia page he really was like that, and film of one of his show trials exists to prove it. Presumably the actor, André Hennicke, must have seen it; but I think what I'm trying to say is that the performances of all the leads failed to engage me.
I also got the impression that it was made on a pretty tight budget. There were only two scenes with any extras and, literally, only one exterior shot that I can recall (Scholl and her brother leaving her apartment at the start) in the entire film. I guess that the filmmakers identified surviving buildings from the period and either used them or recreated the interiors in a studio.
To sum up, Scholl sounds like she must have been a pretty amazing person, but was left with the feeling that the film didn't quite do her justice. I hit the stop button shortly before the end, becuase it looked like the execution scene was going to leave very little to the imagination, and I was watching the film on an aeroplane with a child in the seat next to me.
I saw the film on Northwest flight 37 from Amsterdam to Boston on 18 July, on the A330's LCD screen entertainment system. It was very impressive - each seat has its own 5 or 6-inch 4x3 LCD panel, and there is a choice of around 20-30 feature films, any one of which can be started on demand. The film was letterboxed and subtitled - not panned/scanned or dubbed, which is a big plus. I also suspect that the audio was downmixed to 2.0 and optimised so that the dialogue was easily audible above the noise of the plane - if so, another nice touch.
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