German, Subtitles
Another modern movie from Germany that deals with the real world in Germany during the years Hitler held power.
Albrecht Stein, a 17 year old young man in Nazi Germany, is enrolled in the Napola political academy by his father. While being groomed for a membership in the SS, Albrecht becomes disillusioned with the Nazi ideology he at first embraced.
From Other Reviews:For a German boy in 1942, there were few greater honors than being invited to attend one of the National Political Institutes of Learning (NaPoLA was the German acronym), which were essentially military schools designed to turn teenagers into Nazi soldiers. Hitler was on the march throughout Europe, and the Fuhrer needed brainwashed future leaders.
He’s invited to attend the academy on the strength of his prowess in the boxing ring. Against the wishes of his father, who disagrees with Hitler’s youth program, Albrecht runs away to school and quickly adjusts to the rigorous life of a Nazi soldier-in-training.
We soon meet a quieter, more sensitive young man who would rather write poetry than fight. He’s there because his father is the governor and because his father wants to turn him into a non-feeling German soldier.
Both boys are alarmed by the way boxing is handled at the school: You keep fighting until someone is unconscious, even if it means hitting your opponent when he’s already on the ground. Still, the brutality of their leaders (and, by extension, their government) doesn’t fully dawn on them until a group of cadets is recruited to search for escaped Russian POWs in a forest and ordered to shoot them on sight.
The end, as you would expect is not pretty, but here again German filmmakers are open to their nation’s infamous past. Before the Fall is the latest no-holds-barred look at that shameful period by the Germans.
He’s invited to attend the academy on the strength of his prowess in the boxing ring. Against the wishes of his father, who disagrees with Hitler’s youth program, Albrecht runs away to school and quickly adjusts to the rigorous life of a Nazi soldier-in-training.
We soon meet a quieter, more sensitive young man who would rather write poetry than fight. He’s there because his father is the governor and because his father wants to turn him into a non-feeling German soldier.
Both boys are alarmed by the way boxing is handled at the school: You keep fighting until someone is unconscious, even if it means hitting your opponent when he’s already on the ground. Still, the brutality of their leaders (and, by extension, their government) doesn’t fully dawn on them until a group of cadets is recruited to search for escaped Russian POWs in a forest and ordered to shoot them on sight.
The end, as you would expect is not pretty, but here again German filmmakers are open to their nation’s infamous past. Before the Fall is the latest no-holds-barred look at that shameful period by the Germans.
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