Before the Fall - NaPolA (2004) Elite Für Den Führer [German, English subtitles.]
Just watched this. I’d have to see it again to go over it more critically, but I don’t think I’d enjoy doing that any time soon.
It’s a good film. Not brilliant, but solidly good. Some very fine acting. I’ve heard it compared to ‘Dead Poets Society’, and I can see where the similarities are - but it’s decidedly not anywhere near as optimistic a film as DPS, if only because of its subject. (And really, people need to stop comparing movies about boys at a school to DPS - someone tried to compare ‘The History Boys’ to it, to which I could only say: what.)
My biggest criticism is that in the climactic part of the scene at the lake, Albrecht’s half was filmed/directed in a (I thought) melodramatic/overwrought way. (The director is so young! The ~40 minutes Making Of mini-doc is well worth the time. It also has, in the auditions bit, a great scene between the two main characters that got changed in the final film.) But beyond that, I enjoyed the visuals/directing choices.
As for complaints that the film glorifies Nazi aesthetics: I didn’t feel that at all. It shows the primary character being impressed/taken in by the imposing appearances, but I didn’t get the impression that the director was overly enamoured with his visual material. Maybe that’s because I’ve already had the uncomfortable conversation with myself re interest in uniforms vs. knowledge of their atrocities - which the film doesn’t gloss over - and so didn’t end up projecting anything.
Speaking of projection - I went in thinking I’d read the main relationship as a gay friendship, but the friendship stood on its own. Maybe if your slash goggles are super-glued to your face? Though if that scene in the auditions had stayed in, I might be saying something different here - but it’d also change the main character, and I found the final decision interesting. I didn’t even really see anything gay in the film at all - there’s one moment that could be read as predatory, but I barely saw it as such, and I’m not sure if it was meant that way. (Several people on IMDB seem to think it was supposed to be, though.) This is the same kind of speculation as before, but this reaction seems to tie into my pet research-idea about the Gay Nazi.
TL;DR: Good film with some great acting. Intense, even brutal in places, worth a watch (especially if you’re a uniform fetishist). Does a good job of showing how people could be sucked in by the aesthetics/regime/philosophies/etc. without idealizing/romanticizing it.
