Os Últimos Rebeldes

I have always been a very big fan of swing music and am a "Hollywood Jew". I.e., not very religious or observant of the ancient traditions, but still a Jew in humor and emotions. So this movie never fails to make my tear up. To imagine a time and place where not only your seeming friends turn on you, but you can't even listen to your kind of music is a special kind of hell on earth.

The dance and music sequences are wonderful and I can't see or hear them enough. Solid sounds, daddio! However, the film wisely preempts the reverie and jerks you back to the Nazi repression each time. It suggests how those poor "Swingkleine" must have felt. The sweet and sorrowful blend here.

Someone criticized this picture for not showing enough death. I think the boxes of human ashes and the random Brownshirt raids show enough of that! This picture isn't about the Holocaust -- it's about trying to survive when your society goes seriously wrong.

I will always think of "Swing Kids" when I hear the truism: "It don' mean a thing if it ain't got that SWING. Do-wah do-wha do-wah do-wah do-wha do-wha do-wha do-WHAAAAA".

i have read the comment about SWING KIDS not being authentic. well, after doing a bit of research on this topic (swing scene in germany in the third reich) i have to say that there was quite a big scene there. yes, the film might have exaggerated a bit (the hair was not quite as long and they had to cut down on the way they dressed even though they tried as much as they could on the zoot suit front). but it is a fact that there were dances in different cafes and they didnt like the Nazi regime. so i would say give the film makers some slack and a bit of artistic freedom! they tried to portray a group of youngsters that found cure in music and stuck together in a difficult time. i really appreciated this film as normally you wouldnt know about them at all!!! two thumbs up from me as well!!!

The central characters in this movie are unpolitical teenagers who have no concern with the larger political issues of Naziism and simply want to enjoy themselves. Their only perspective is that Nazis are stuffy, conformist jerks and no fun at all. For this reason, a number of mainstream critics (among them Ebert and Berardinelli) trashed the picture for trivializing the crimes and horrors of the Third Reich. These critics, I think, miss the point.

The value of the movie is precisely that it is trivial. There is no hindsight. The audience, like the characters, is caught up in the everydayness of everyday life in a totalitarian state. The Nazis are the government, and as far as anyone can see in 1938-39 they are going to go on being the government forever. The war hasn't happened yet. The Swastika flag flying over every post office and courthouse doesn't give them a little shudder of horror; it's as normal as the Stars and Stripes is to us. All sensible, respectable people who aren't Nazis themselves go along with the Nazis, because they have no reason not to.

Auschwitz hasn't happened yet either. Sure, there are concentration camps out there somewhere, but that has nothing to do with normal, ordinary people who behave themselves. Unless you happen to know a Jew or a political dissident yourself, what the government is doing to people like that isn't your problem.

The teen-aged lead characters find themselves in opposition and in trouble, not because they have any principled objections to the government, but simply because they find respectable culture boring and want to amuse themselves. The first reaction of authority, in the person of Kenneth Branagh's kindly Gestapo man, is that all they need is a good talking to, a second chance, and a little constructive guidance in the Hitler Youth and they'll grow up to be good citizens. He's fifty percent right; Thomas does respond positively to the comradeship and healthy outdoor activity he finds there.

The ultimate choices made by the two boys are governed not by principle but by their personal situations. Thomas has been rebelling against his cold, pompous, wealthy father, whom he loathes, and he ultimately decides that being a dutiful Nazi and denouncing the old man to the Gestapo offers him much better revenge than dancing to illegal jazz records. Peter recoils from the Hitler Youth (and from his former friend) because his own father had disappeared, perhaps into the camps, after the Nazis took power several years earlier.

There's's no hindsight in the movie's perspective, and no heroism. Instead, it gives us ordinary, everyday people dealing with ordinary everyday life as they find it, from the viewpoint of a high school student. The movie leads the adolescents who are its target audience to ask themselves an unpleasant question -- would they be any different, any more politically aware, if they were in the same situation? Indeed, would they even realize it if they were actually in the same situation now?

The implicit answer is that they probably wouldn't be all that different from ordinary non-political German teenagers in 1938, minding their own business, going about their own lives, and at most trying to carve a little more personal space than the government wants to give them. That's disconcerting and not at all flattering, which is why Swing Kids is worth watching.

Ok for you people who refer to all the Germans as "worthless human beings" and talk about how this movie didn't focus on the holocaust, etc....WAKE UP! The point of this movie was to give another perspective on the war. Not all Germans were souless killers. Throughout the movie you could see the consciences of the main characters being pushed and pulled about what was happening. Over here in Western culture, everything is portrayed in black and white: all the Germans were completely evil, and we were the good ones. No one is denying that the Germans committed some horrific atrocities, but there were some who resisted doing those crimes, and others who actually believed that they were morally in the right because of centuries of ingrained anti-semitism. Geez, North America was anti-semitic then too! Swing Kids looks at Germany from the inside, and the different forces that were at work. Everyone knows what happened during the Holocaust....this movie wasn't about that. I think people should look at all different viewpoints before classifying all the people in a certain group (ie all of the German nation) into one cubbyhole of evil.

I'm a History teacher and we use Swing Kids as an introduction to the topic of alternative youth groups in Nazi Germany. I'm not saying that the film is 100% accurate, obviously some dramatic licence has to be taken, but its not far off. Many people on this site have questioned the accuracy, and validity of the film, especially mentioning the lack of consideration of the treatment of the Jews. However that is not what this film is about (if that is what you want see The Pianist or Schindler's List - also excellent films).

This film is looking at how some German youths avoided the Hitler Youth and the nazi regime insofar as they could, and what they spent their time doing (dancing, listening to swing music and being with their friends).It does show some useful aspects about how the Hitler Youth were expected to behave and the propaganda they were exposed to, as well as about swing youth and their attitude to the regime.It is an entertaining and poignant film which explores friendship,romance and growing up against the backdrop of one of the most vilified periods in modern history

Basically Swing Kids does what it does well. Maybe it isn't a Schindler's List, but it does have its merits.Watch it and you'll find them!

BTW - could I just point out, many people on here have referred to the Holocaust, as though it is interchangeable with the Nazi regime, and have used the phrase in their reviews. Just to clear up this: the holocaust specifically refers to the gassing of Jews at extermination camps from 1942 onwards, essentially the Final Solution. As this film is set in 1939 it is prior to this.