This is a good film and the actress, Julia Jentsch, who plays Sophie plays her part convincingly. The subject matter is sombre and the story well known. The title gives away the plot anyway ('Sophie Scholl, the last days'). Spoilers hardly come into it, therefore. The result of all this is that there is little drama, since there is almost no suspense. The only really dramatic parts are the scenes around the arrest of Sophie and her brother.
It is a small film and the budget must have been tiny. It is more like a TV play. Almost all scenes are indoors with few participants. We see nothing of the lives of the characters before the days covered in the film. There are no flashbacks. Nazi atrocities are mentioned, but they are well and truly "off stage". The sense that this is Nazi Germany is rather sketchy, and the audience has to fill in using knowledge from previous films or books.
Quite why Sophie is focused on so heavily is not quite clear. Her brother, Hans, is portrayed somewhat as a humourless ideologue and with his heavy eyebrows and forehead, he looks like a fanatical younger version of Hitler's henchman, Rudolf Hess. Their friend, Christoph Probst, is an potentially interesting character, since he breaks down and grovels for mercy, but little is made of this.
The weakest scene of all, in my opinion, is the one where Sophie, Hans and Christoph meet again prior to their executions. They give each other a rather embarrassed and perfunctory hug. Somehow the whole thing should have been more moving than this.
So, it is a good film and well worth seeing, but I think the definitive film about the Scholls is still waiting to be made. I hope someone will do it one day.
It is a small film and the budget must have been tiny. It is more like a TV play. Almost all scenes are indoors with few participants. We see nothing of the lives of the characters before the days covered in the film. There are no flashbacks. Nazi atrocities are mentioned, but they are well and truly "off stage". The sense that this is Nazi Germany is rather sketchy, and the audience has to fill in using knowledge from previous films or books.
Quite why Sophie is focused on so heavily is not quite clear. Her brother, Hans, is portrayed somewhat as a humourless ideologue and with his heavy eyebrows and forehead, he looks like a fanatical younger version of Hitler's henchman, Rudolf Hess. Their friend, Christoph Probst, is an potentially interesting character, since he breaks down and grovels for mercy, but little is made of this.
The weakest scene of all, in my opinion, is the one where Sophie, Hans and Christoph meet again prior to their executions. They give each other a rather embarrassed and perfunctory hug. Somehow the whole thing should have been more moving than this.
So, it is a good film and well worth seeing, but I think the definitive film about the Scholls is still waiting to be made. I hope someone will do it one day.