Sophie Scholl
WHAT PRICE WOULD YOU PAY?
One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching films is being introduced to people whom we never will have the opportunity to know—but deeply wish we could. Sophie Scholl is one of those people.
In the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, Julia Jentsch plays the young German woman who, along with her brother Hans and three fellow University of Munich students, founded the “White Rose� resistance movement in Nazi Germany in 1942. The film tells the story of Sophie’s last six days of life after she and her brother are arrested in 1943 for distributing leaflets denouncing the Hitler regime and trying to renew the wounded spirit of the German people by helping them to see how they had been deceived.
The director, Marc Rothemund, uses a semi-documentary style to shoot the film. It is fabulously well done! The audience with whom I saw the film was not merely transfixed and focused because of reading the English subtitles of this German-language film; it took a good five minutes for anyone to move after the credits had ceased rolling. The impact of the story was perfectly preserved in the very good directing and editing. Not one frame of unnecessary information or one word of unnecessary dialogue or action was included.
Rothemand proves himself to be very skillful at close-framed shots of faces that tell much of the story without the need for dialogue at all. He also uses light and color to great advantage and (except for the judge in the courtroom scene who was the stereotypical picture of the saliva-spitting, vituperative, and insulting Hitler copycat) all the characters speak calmly and with great control, even Sophie’s interrogator, Herr Mohr. (Okay… Mohr does raise his voice a few times, but only when he gets extremely frustrated with Sophie’s incredible strength of character and dominating moral compass).
Throughout the film, Sophie seeks the light of the sky at every opportunity she gets—as she leaves the house in the morning to go to the university, before she is forced into the Gestapo car, as she is about to enter the Gestapo headquarters, as she is marched across courtyards from one part of the building to another, and before she enters the courthouse. When in her cell, she stretches on tiptoe to see as much of the sky as possible. The sky and its natural light represent a freedom in direct opposition to the harsh and unnatural glare of the interrogation lamp and bare light bulbs that represent her imprisonment.
This film is very dark without actually becoming oppressive. The prominent colors are shades of brown, taupe, gray, and the dullness of a German winter sky. Sophie wears the same clothing throughout… a dark skirt, white blouse, and dark shoes. However, her sweater is burgundy, the only thing of bright color in the film besides the starkly red swastika flags hanging from the government buildings. Sophie dons the sweater, or takes off her coat to reveal the sweater, at key times in the film, just as Rothemand shoots the Nazi flag to recapture the attention of his viewers just when they think they will never see color again. The boldness of Sophie’s sweater becomes a metaphor for her determined inner character and her courage to stand out and stand up for the moral right. This is juxtaposed against the gaudy, blood red flags of an immoral, insane, and basically cowardly regime.
As for the character herself, Sophie realizes soon after her arrest that what she is a part of is something much bigger than herself. She actually understands that she is but a small piece of the big puzzle of time and life and accepts, through prayer and a relationship with God, that her seemingly small and insignificant life is a worthy sacrifice for the activities of the White Rose. Hers is not a pragmatic and cavalier “God is in control and I’ll be spending eternity with himâ€� attitude, but a feature-length portrayal of a believable spiritual journey from fear to hope to doubt to panic to reconciliation to acceptance and finally to peace—not only with God, but also with herself.
Sophie knows that the price she is being asked to pay is acceptable and right. I know that there couldn’t have been one person in the audience I was a part of who wasn’t asking the same questions I was: Would I do what Sophie did? What cause would I have enough passion about to die for? Would I be able to remain calm and not become hysterical in the face of relentless questioning? Would I pray the price of my life… willingly? Sophie went to the guillotine peacefully, only wearing handcuffs, but it was not out of resignation. It was in quiet triumph!
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days was nominated for Best Foreign Film in January 2006 but did not win. The winning film, Tsotsi, must have been absolutely phenomenal!
One of the most enjoyable aspects of watching films is being introduced to people whom we never will have the opportunity to know—but deeply wish we could. Sophie Scholl is one of those people.
In the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, Julia Jentsch plays the young German woman who, along with her brother Hans and three fellow University of Munich students, founded the “White Rose� resistance movement in Nazi Germany in 1942. The film tells the story of Sophie’s last six days of life after she and her brother are arrested in 1943 for distributing leaflets denouncing the Hitler regime and trying to renew the wounded spirit of the German people by helping them to see how they had been deceived.
The director, Marc Rothemund, uses a semi-documentary style to shoot the film. It is fabulously well done! The audience with whom I saw the film was not merely transfixed and focused because of reading the English subtitles of this German-language film; it took a good five minutes for anyone to move after the credits had ceased rolling. The impact of the story was perfectly preserved in the very good directing and editing. Not one frame of unnecessary information or one word of unnecessary dialogue or action was included.
Rothemand proves himself to be very skillful at close-framed shots of faces that tell much of the story without the need for dialogue at all. He also uses light and color to great advantage and (except for the judge in the courtroom scene who was the stereotypical picture of the saliva-spitting, vituperative, and insulting Hitler copycat) all the characters speak calmly and with great control, even Sophie’s interrogator, Herr Mohr. (Okay… Mohr does raise his voice a few times, but only when he gets extremely frustrated with Sophie’s incredible strength of character and dominating moral compass).
Throughout the film, Sophie seeks the light of the sky at every opportunity she gets—as she leaves the house in the morning to go to the university, before she is forced into the Gestapo car, as she is about to enter the Gestapo headquarters, as she is marched across courtyards from one part of the building to another, and before she enters the courthouse. When in her cell, she stretches on tiptoe to see as much of the sky as possible. The sky and its natural light represent a freedom in direct opposition to the harsh and unnatural glare of the interrogation lamp and bare light bulbs that represent her imprisonment.
This film is very dark without actually becoming oppressive. The prominent colors are shades of brown, taupe, gray, and the dullness of a German winter sky. Sophie wears the same clothing throughout… a dark skirt, white blouse, and dark shoes. However, her sweater is burgundy, the only thing of bright color in the film besides the starkly red swastika flags hanging from the government buildings. Sophie dons the sweater, or takes off her coat to reveal the sweater, at key times in the film, just as Rothemand shoots the Nazi flag to recapture the attention of his viewers just when they think they will never see color again. The boldness of Sophie’s sweater becomes a metaphor for her determined inner character and her courage to stand out and stand up for the moral right. This is juxtaposed against the gaudy, blood red flags of an immoral, insane, and basically cowardly regime.
As for the character herself, Sophie realizes soon after her arrest that what she is a part of is something much bigger than herself. She actually understands that she is but a small piece of the big puzzle of time and life and accepts, through prayer and a relationship with God, that her seemingly small and insignificant life is a worthy sacrifice for the activities of the White Rose. Hers is not a pragmatic and cavalier “God is in control and I’ll be spending eternity with himâ€� attitude, but a feature-length portrayal of a believable spiritual journey from fear to hope to doubt to panic to reconciliation to acceptance and finally to peace—not only with God, but also with herself.
Sophie knows that the price she is being asked to pay is acceptable and right. I know that there couldn’t have been one person in the audience I was a part of who wasn’t asking the same questions I was: Would I do what Sophie did? What cause would I have enough passion about to die for? Would I be able to remain calm and not become hysterical in the face of relentless questioning? Would I pray the price of my life… willingly? Sophie went to the guillotine peacefully, only wearing handcuffs, but it was not out of resignation. It was in quiet triumph!
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days was nominated for Best Foreign Film in January 2006 but did not win. The winning film, Tsotsi, must have been absolutely phenomenal!
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