limsy political reverberation aside, the recent cinematic assault on increasingly abundant historical evidence in the form of wartime diaries, firsthand accounts, and government transcripts as the foundation for austere (Oliver Hirschbiegel’s engrossing Downfall springs to mind) and rigorous (Dennis Gansel’s potent Napola) interpretations of momentous historical conflicts has brought new life to the already amply documented totalitarianism of the Hitler-dominated Germany of WWII.

It is with such offhand self-importance that Sophie Scholl: The Last Days appears as a timidly beautified documentation of the final days in the life of an unlikely heroine extolled to iconic status in a country still evidently scarred by its bloodied past. And while the self-restraining latency with which it lingers on assiduosly retrieved factual sources imposes authenticity to an otherwise uncomfortably idealized impersonation, it peculiarly holds onto this exclusive insignia overly tightly, assuming it to be sufficiently justifiable for the lack of a broader cinematic and ideological vision.

Sophie Scholl isn’t the first big screen documentation of the White Rose resistance movement (Jentsch was preceeded by Lena Stolze in portraying Scholl in both Percy Aldon’s 1982 The Last Five Days and Michael Verhoeven’s 1983 The White Rose). This version’s main selling point is its factual accuracy, owing primarily to Mark Rothemund’s recent discovery of the official transcripts of the Gestapo interrogations of Sophie—locked away in the GDR archives for years—which went on to form the centerpiece of his movie. But Sophie was never alone, a fact the film doesn’t seem to grasp, and to witness the figure of this humble biology student being equated with the motivational ideology of the White Rose movement leaves a curiously unpleasant aftertaste.

Heedlessly leapfrogging into context, the crushing neglect with which Sophie's two ideological cohorts—brother Hans and friend Christoph Probst—are regarded throughout the movie is consistently overpassed in favor of the evidenceless deification of Sophie's character. Starting with the events of February 18, 1943 and documenting the final five days of Sophie' (and both Hans' and Christoph's) short life (she was only 21 at the time), the movie builds up stamina in the abstruse ideological confrontations between Sophie and Robert Mohr, the Nazi party member and inquisitor responsible for the script's more provocative moments. Sophie's assertion that "It was either high spirits or stupidity that made me throw 80 to 100 leaflets from the third floor of the university into the inner courtyard" doesn't ring true outside its historical context, not least because Rothemund doesn't seem to have made up his mind as to whether it is ideological engagement or emotional temblor he wants to focus on, making the film seem more like a Sunday night Lifetime docu-drama than a gripping biopic brimming with self-assuredness.


The ideological underpinnings of the Nazi's aren't condescendingly exaggerated, a laudable accomplishment when the suggestion of immediate condemnation is so lushiously served. Sophie Scholl isn’t adamant in its apoliticality, nor is its self-professed asceticism a back-of-the-carriage ticket for a tighter, subtler political agenda, but even despite (or due to) such lighthearted unconcern you can’t help but feel its adamant willingness to stir, emotionally and otherwise. Why else would tight, engaging, and sharply acted altercations (the final courtroom scene is an example of the movie’s finer moments) unassumingly stand alongside tedious (sound editing was clearly not a priority), pretentious (emotionally) and, frankly, unnecessary (plot-wise) visual explorations of Sophie’s compassionate humanity? The entire movie is, in fact, a strangely austere farrago of ideological knock-down-drag-outs and high-aiming cinematic tedium.

And with the establishment of the notion that the “Sophie Scholl“ in the title is as pertinent as calling the Beatles the John Lennon band, the movie further fails in depicting the drastic extent and bravura of the White Rose's more courageous acts. Sure, you can argue that the chronological sequentiality of the events is no place for extraneous digressions, but when painting slogans such as "Down With Hitler," "Hitler Mass Murderer," and "freedom" on sides of houses while policemen patrol neighboring streets during a totalitarian submit-or-succumb regime is your favorite pastime, surely you would feel a moral obligation to provide more than just dry blabber to support your case.

Consumed by its filmic dryness, Sophie Scholl doesn’t hobble in its own self-indulgency, though, thus avoiding the pitfall of enervated elevation of its very subject to self-absorbed Joan of Arc-esque martyrdom. And while no argument can be raised against the factual accuracy of the script itself—Rothemund himself admitted to having gone as far as researching weather forecast information for the days his movie documents—it is the strange confusion originating from a script unclear as to what its aim is that stains Sophie Scholl’s otherwise noble intent.