Review – Sophie Scholl

This production serves as a poignant and important reminder that Germany wasn’t a single-minded, monolithic thing in World War Two, that many Germans resisted the Nazis and some paid a terrible price for doing so. In 1943 Sophie Scholl, her brother and a friend were executed for the high crime of distributing leaflets criticizing the government. The movie takes us through the “crime” itself, the interrogation, the trial, and (briefly at the end) the execution. The tale is touching, particularly in the simplicity of the characters. Sophie and her companions aren’t superhero resistance fighters. They’re just college students engaged in what a sane society would regard as completely normal behavior. Nor are the Nazis portrayed as demons with syringes full of truth serum and lines like “vee haf vays uff mekking you talk.” Instead the interrogation comes across as a bureaucratic process, almost church-like in the ritual comings and goings of the Gestapo officers. The movie is worth a look, though the special features left something to be desired; the parts I watched were dull, poorly-edited interviews with surviving people with a remote connection to the case. Worth seeing