Sophie Scholl

Star Review

Sophie Scholl was the most prominent member of the White Rose Movement, the Munich student group who disseminated anti-Nazi propaganda during WW2. Marc Rothemund’s rigorous drama, detailing Scholl’s arrest and interrogation, first appears to have been conceived as a challenge. Can a filmmaker pare his technique down to the barest minimum yet avoid theatricality? And can a film really go under a title like that and still be suspenseful?

The answer is yes to both, mainly as the raw material - Scholl’s story, derived from recently-released transcripts - has been dramatised on every level. Rothemund employs a basic film grammar during the two-handed scenes between Sophie (Julia Jentsch) and her interrogator Mohr (Alexander Held). Any visual flourish registers doubly.

The result is as historically resonant as another recent German chamber piece, Downfall, with a central performance as thoughtful and tenacious as the film itself. As The Edukators suggested, Jentsch is a real discovery: an actress with the ability to suggest not only would she have ideas, but that she would hold onto them, however fragile, and
whatever price her characters might have to pay as a consequence.

Mike McCahill on 21st March 2006

View all 124 of Mike McCahill’s reviews

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Film Description

A moving dramatisation of the last days of Sophie Scholl, the Resistance fighter arrested after distributing anti-Nazi leaflets with the White Rose group in 1943. Jentsch is terrific in the title role and the film is based on transcripts of the interrogation and witness interviews. A tense and illuminating account of an extremely courageous stance taken against overwhelming odds.

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Film Details

Cast

Julia Jentsch, Fabian Hinrichs

Technical Details

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