Before The Fall [Napola – Elite für den Führer] **** (2004, Max Riemelt, Tom Schilling, Devid Striesow) – Classic Movie Review 12,712

Director Dennis Gansel’s quietly devastating, authentic feeling 2004 German drama film Before the Fall stars Max Riemelt and Tom Schilling. It is an urgently expressed eye-opener to a forgotten horror in history.

Writer/ director Dennis Gansel’s quietly devastating 2004 German drama film Before the Fall stars Max Riemelt as young Friedrich Weimer, a skilled boxer in wartime Nazi Germany in 1942. He catches the eye of a middle-aged official at a National Political Academy (NaPolA), one of Hitler’s high schools producing the Nazi elite, who offers him an appointment to ‘audition’ to see if he can get in. The boy’s parents are shocked when he says he intends to enrol, and his anti-Nazi factory worker father angrily refuses permission. But the boy forges the needed permission signature and sneaks out of the house at night and joins the chateau of hell.

Though in some ways tough, Friedrich is a bit of an innocent optimist and a dreamer, simply seeing the Nazi high school as his way out of a doomed future in a factory and into university and a good life with plenty of money. Unfortunately he’s plunged himself in a scarily abusive situation.

He arrives at Allenstein, where the Academy is located and is introduced to his roommates Christoph, Hefe, Tjaden and Siggi, joined that evening by another new roommate, Albrecht Stein, with whom Friedrich starts a tentative friendship.

During his year in seventh column (fifth form), Friedrich encounters the full shocking complement of hazing, cruelty, death of other boys, and Nazi indoctrination. On the plus side, he has one sort of friend, Albrecht, the aesthetic son of the area’s governor. This is odd and interesting, because Albrecht is exactly the opposite of him. He writes descriptive essays and poetry, and his father calls him weak. Attraction of opposites maybe, though Friedrich has his own soft side. He empathises with others, wants to help, and has a warm heart and a soft centre. Boxing wise, he wants to win, but he doesn’t want to damage and maim. He draws a line. That far and no farther.

One night, news of escaped Russian POWs at large in the forest nearby leads to the boys ‘volunteering’ to hunt for them, leading to a total change in everything.

This is a very good film, intense and intelligent, with plenty on its mind, and the right words and images to express it ideas. Riemelt is tremendous, hitting exactly the right notes all the way, a splendid advert for troubled but triumphant young manhood. Riemelt perfectly embodies Friedrich, ironically exactly the Nazi ideal, but eventually rejecting all those appalling values. The Nazi high school proves a great education for Friedrich, but the fees are high. Tom Schilling is ideal as Albrecht, who seems ‘weak’ but has his own strengths, and all the acting is convincing, as is the period recreation in an extremely well crafted, persuasive movie.

By the way, it is neither a boxing drama nor a gay drama, though it includes elements of both. They are just grist to the general mill here, a complex mix that requires some considerable attention and engagement though no particular effort as it is so engaging and engrossing.

We’re told at the end of the film that in 1945, with the Germans losing the war, all the lads from the various, maybe 40 or so Nazi high schools. more than 15,000 students, were sent to the war front, and half of them were killed.

Before The Fall (2004) original title: Napola – Elite für den Führer.

Language: German.

Bouzov Castle, in the Czech Republic, is the location for the fictional Allenstein school.

Friedrich is based partly on Gansel’s grandfather who was a teacher in a Napola.

The cast are Max Riemelt as Friedrich Weimer, Tom Schilling as Albrecht Stein, Jonas Jägermeyr as Christoph Schneider, Leon Alexander Kersten as Tjaden, Thomas Drechsel as Hefe, Alexander Held as Friedrich’s father, Martin Goeres as Siegfried ‘Siggi’ Gladen, Florian Stetter as Justus von Jaucher, Devid Striesow as Heinrich Vogler, Joachim Bissmeier as Dr. Karl Klein, Michael Schenk as Josef Peiner ‘Peiniger’, Justus von Dohnanyi as Gauleiter Heinrich Stein, Claudia Michelsen as Frau Stein, Julie Engelbrecht as Katharina, Johannes Zirner as Torben Send, and Dennis Gansel as Boxing Trainer.

The closing narration states: ‘Until 1945, there were in the German Reich around 40 National Political Educational Institutes with more than 15,000 students. When the war was finally acknowledged as being lost, they were sent out into the “Final Struggle”. Blinded by instructed fanaticism and insufficiently armed, they still offered bitter resistance in many battles. Half of them died.’

Max Riemelt has starred in all of Dennis Gansel’s feature films, starting with Mädchen, Mädchen. In 2013, he starred in the movie Free Fall with Hanno Koffler, and in 2019 in Kopfplatzen [Head Burst].

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,712

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