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Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage|Sophie Scholl: The Last Days

Talky Oscar nominee inferior to other films on the subject

By GERALD PEARY | March 10, 2006

2.0 Stars

LONG WINDED: Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage

Germans dealing with the Nazi period have to excavate for local heroes who opposed Hitler’s regime in a forthright, courageous way. That’s why three features have been made about Munich’s Weiße Rose group, an underground band of students who in 1942-’43 distributed anti-Nazi pacifist pamphlets before being arrested by the Gestapo and executed. In 1982, the great German actress Lena Stoltze played the most famous Weiße Rose member, Sophie Scholl, in complementary films, Die letzten fünf Tage|The Last Five Days and Die Weiße Rose. Both are superior to Marc Rothemund’s speech-saturated German Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film. It’s a forceful and exciting melodrama for its first half-hour, when Sophie (an effective Julia Jentsch) and her brother Hans are arrested by the Gestapo, and you feel Sophie’s isolation and loneliness. But it loses its momentum as Sophie finds time in prison for long-winded ideological debates with Mohr (Alexander Held), her increasingly flustered Nazi inquisitor. She also manages time in her cell for God and the Savior, an uncomfortably evangelic spin to this legendary anti-Fascist story.

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Watch the trailer for Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage|Sophie Scholl: The Last Days on the film's official site (QuickTime)

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