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Film Description
German drama about a Nazi military training school. With the Second World War in full swing, two teenage boys are enrolled in a National Political Academy (NaPolA), a youth facility for the training of future Nazi leaders. Friedrich (Max Riemelt), a working-class boy with a talent for boxing, and the Governor's sensitive, poetry-loving son Albrecht (Tom Schilling) must lay aside their innocence and humanity as they prepare to join the Nazi elite.
"Before the Fall" -
Howard Schumann on 4th January 2012
Based on the recollections of his grandfather, Dennis Gansels Before the Fall (Napola Elite fr den Fhrer) is a riveting coming of age story about the training of young... more >
Based on the recollections of his grandfather, Dennis Gansels Before the Fall (Napola Elite fr den Fhrer) is a riveting coming of age story about the training of young Nazi elites in National-Political Institutes of Learning in Germany during 1942. The work tackles a universal theme - the struggle between external ideals and matters of inner conscience. In the film, 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 and genuinely idealistic when he is approached after an amateur boxing match by a Nazi instructor at a Napola school. Friederichs mind is open to the Nazi indoctrination not because he is without conscience but because he simply hasnt seen any reason to question the prevailing zeitgeist. Freiderichs limited world experience expands when he meets two other classmates: Siegfried Gladen (Martin Goeres) and Albrecht Stein (Tom Schilling).
Albrecht has the dangerous idea that people should consult their own conscience before blindly following orders and is a boy of sensitivity and poetry. His father is revolted, however, by the boys 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 Jewish children. This incident results in a break in the relationship of the two boys and a sudden but predictable tragedy that leads to Freidrichs realization of the true nature of the Nazi barbarity. Before the Fall is a profound statement of how people need to be educated to think for themselves. Impeccably directed and beautifully performed, Before the Fall is one of the most powerful and disturbing films of recent memory.
