Corps d'élite

I just watched Napola at the Montreal World Film Festival and I was pleasantly surprised. This choice of a random movie turned out to be a real cinematographic gem.

Set during World War II, this movie is about the dilemma and choices of some German teenagers who attend a napola - a special institution for gifted boys to turn them into the Nazi elite. Their days consist of military training and indoctrination; they are forced to lose all pity and become ruthless servants of the Fuhrer.

The story follows the entrance of Friedrich into a napola, the changes that he undergoes and the choices that he makes. Admitted because of his boxing skills, he seizes it as an opportunity to escape his poor working class situation. His best friend at the napola is the Governor's son - sensitive, caring, humane and opposed to Nazi dogma, he is obviously in the wrong place but has no choice but to fulfill his dad's wishes. As their friendship develops, Friedrich struggles between the ideology that the napola is forcing upon him and his friend's pacific beliefs.

This powerful film with excellent acting culminates on the boxing ring as Friedrich fights against the champion from another napola. The scene of the morning practice on the frozen lake left me breathless, while the ending of the grenade throwing session shook me with its passion, despair, and horror.

Another reason why I liked this movie so much is that it is made by Germans; indeed one would expect Hollywood to come up with such a story and that the outcome would be a highly emotional melodrama. I could feel the director disagreeing strongly with the Nazis, but rather than feeling shameful for what his countrymen did 60 years ago, he denounced it. Indeed, Friedrich's ultimate choice should be the choice of the new Germany.

My rating: 9/10

In a world of Nazi madness most people follow the leaders... regardless of their values. When a Nazi officer sees his son's critical of the system, he thinks he is too weak. This sums it up. In his mind those who kill more people, who follow the Nazi ideals are the strong ones. There's no room for the "weak ones". His son has become aware of the lies and the lack of human values of those who order them kill Russian unarmed kids trying to escape, and has realized they're becoming evil like his father. Going against the system is extremely difficult and painful, requires strength of character...

This movie painfully opens our eyes to why a whole country looked the other way when atrocities happened and makes us think whether or not we would've been any different had we been in their shoes. The story was told in a very simple, yet sensitive manner, with excellent acting and beautiful, photography.

Involving rigorous physical activity and political indoctrination in total subservience to Hitler and his ideas of a German master race, Napolas (National-Political Institutes of Learning) were established with the purpose of training future political, business, and social leaders for the "Thousand-Year Reich". In these schools, there was no room for debating opposing views or philosophical niceties like ends and means. The schools taught that only the strong survive. Anyone who showed any trace of independent thinking or sensitivity to human values were sadistically harassed and weeded out.

Based on the recollections of his grandfather, Dennis Gansel's Before the Fall (Napola —Elite für den Führer) is a riveting coming of age story about the training of one such Nazi elite in the Germany of 1942. The work transcends its limitations as a genre film to tackle a more universal theme - the struggle between external ideals and matters of inner conscience. Like Igor, the idealistic teenager in Dardenne's La Promesse, Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt), a Nordic-looking, working class boxer must deal with issues of conscience in an environment that is anathema to the assertion of human values. Friedrich is only seventeen when he is approached after an amateur boxing match by a Nazi instructor at a Napola school. Seeking to salvage the athletic reputation of the school, he sees in Freidrich not only a boxing champion, but a blank slate that can be molded to fit the Nazi ideal.

Friedrich, destined to follow his father as a factory laborer, sees the chance to both serve the fatherland and advance his own career and signs his own registration papers when his father refuses to agree. The boy is still very innocent but genuinely idealistic and possesses genuine warmth as shown in the scene in which he reassures his younger brother. Friederich's mind is open to the Nazi indoctrination not because he is without conscience but because he simply hasn't seen any reason to question the prevailing zeitgeist.

Freiderich's limited world experience suddenly expands, however, when he meets two other classmates: Siegfried Gladen (Martin Goeres), a boy who has a bed-wetting problem ruthlessly exploited as weakness by his fellow cadets and their sadistic teachers, and Albrecht Stein (Tom Schilling), the son of Heinrich Stein (Justus Vob Dohnanyi), a hateful Nazi governor. Albrecht who has the dangerous idea that people should consult their own conscience before blindly following orders is a boy of sensitivity and poetry, the embodiment perhaps of the true German spirit of Goethe and Heine. His father is revolted, however, by the boy's perceived weakness and humiliates him by insisting that he and Freidrich engage in a very uneven boxing match when he invites his friend to his home.

Albrecht begins to question the merciless Nazi training after he sees Freidrich deliver a blow to the head of a fighter when he is already down. He also recoils in horror and speaks out publicly after the cadets are marched out into the forest to track down and murder allegedly escaped Russian POWs, in reality unarmed children. This incident results in a break in the relationship of the two boys and a sudden but predictable tragedy.

Before the Fall is more than an accounting of the Nazi's disregard for human values, a fact already well-established. It is a more profound statement of how people need to be educated to think for themselves and take a stand for what they believe to be right. Impeccably directed and beautifully performed, Before the Fall is one of the most powerful and disturbing films of recent memory.

BEFORE THE FALL ('NAPOLA') is a brilliantly made film that addresses the blind hopes of youth in becoming a success as a man, a factor that allowed and allows dictators to entice young men into the realm of warriors under the guise of applauded bravery and the golden promise of achieving glory for a great cause. This story just happens to be about Hitler and his 40 Napola (training camps for the elite German youths in 1942) and the young boys and men who trained in these National Political societies. It could be found in many places and in many times...

Friedrich Weimer (handsome and talented young Max Riemelt) comes from the lower class in Germany (his father is aiming him toward factory work) and is a fine young boxer. His talents are noted by some representatives from the Nazi party and he is asked to report for enrollment in a Napola, an important means of education and training that Friedrich sees as being his way to become something special, someone important. His father is anti-Nazi and refuses to let Friedrich go, but Friedrich is determined and runs into the night to join the Napola. Once there he is admitted, groomed as a boxer for the Napola, and introduced to the Hitler's youth movement. His fellow classmates vary from the very wealthy to other fine Arian lads. They are trained, observed, and brainwashed as to the glory of the Thousand Year Reich. Problems begin to arise when Friedrich gets to know his fellow classmates: Siegfried (Martin Goeres) is a bed wetter and is humiliated publicly for his problem; Albrecht (Tom Schilling) is a poet and writer whose father is one of the governors of the Napola and Albrecht is anti-war; other lads seem on the surface to be obedient yet most have hidden reservations about what they are doing.

Being 1942 some changes are occurring in the Nazi dream and the Senior class is sent out on a mission to fight the enemy. And one night Friedrich's class is called out of bed and sent into the woods to find Russian soldiers who are 'threatening' their security. The boys open fire on the Russians only to find that they have killed a number of unarmed Russian boys. This profoundly disturbs them all, but Albrecht in particular. Friedrich continues to observe the manner in which he and the other boys are used and slowly his best friends find ways to martyr themselves and ultimately Friedrich does the same in his only way - by changing the way he approaches the Napola expectations of his boxing.

Max Riemelt as Friedrich is outstanding: not only does he have the solid extraordinary good looks but he also can act, satisfying every nuance of this challenging role. The remainder of the cast - both young boys and the adults running the Napola - are superb. The cinematography is subtly beautiful, ranging from the tough interiors inside to the vistas of a Germany before it was destroyed by the not too distant fall. Director Dennis Gansel, who co-wrote the script with Maggie Peren, is a young man (the featurette with the DVD has an enlightening conversation between Gansel and Riemelt) knows exactly how to capture both the wide-eyed innocence of youth and the slowly crumbled ideals of young men. This is an outstanding film to see and experience. Its lessons are terrifying and intense. In German with English subtitles. Grady Harp

This film which depicts an elite Nazi teenage male youth training facility takes place in Germany during 1941 or 1942. Students are being trained to become future leaders after Germany wins the war. Much of the training is brutal. Students are taught to win regardless of any pain that their actions might cause their fellow man - whether friend or foe, fellow countryman or enemy. The film tells how the students accept or reject their training and the consequences of their decisions/indecisions.

I saw this film at the 2005 Palm Springs International Film Festival at a "Best of Fest" special showing. It certainly should be a candidate for an academy nomination as "Best Foreign Language Film" but I do not know if it has a distributor for North America. It reminded me somewhat of a 2003 Palm Springs festival entry - EVIL/ONDSKAN (Dir. Mikael Hafstrom/Sweden) - which also packed an emotional kick in the gut that left me stuck in my seat for at least five minutes after the film had ended. Napola is the better of the two films by far. Great acting, script, direction, music, etc. See it on a big cinema screen if at all possible since film makes great use of the colors that will not have a similar impact in a video format.