BEFORE THE FALL [NR]
review by Sue Katz

Before The Fall is Dennis Gansel’s unflinching look at life in 1942 Germany for boys who have been judged sufficiently Aryan and accomplished to attend high schools whose mission is to prepare the next generation of leadership. The handsome adolescent Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt) finds relief in the local boxing gym from his back-breaking labor job. A Nazi recruiter catches his fight and offers him a sports scholarship to a “Napola” - a National Political School where the next generation of Aryan leaders are educated. Friedrich’s father is horrified at the thought of his son having anything to do with “those people,” so Friedrich forges the parental permission slip. Once enrolled, he find himself in a tough-love, homoerotic institution that makes impossible demands on him.

His relationship with the delicate Albrecht Stein (played poignantly by Tom Schilling), the son of the present regional Nazi leader, is the vehicle through which he matures and gains principles. At first Friedrich is overwhelmed with his good luck at being invited into the elite, but he soon makes an enemy of one of the teachers and is humiliated by being forced to drag out his mattress to the morning assembly, lower his pants and piss on his own bed.

The homoerotic tension around the school mixed in with the cruelty of the Nazis makes for a powerful, if unnerving context. Mortification causes at least one suicide among the boys, who are then subjected to the false glorification of that sorry child as a hero who threw himself on a grenade to “save his comrades.” All the boys know this is a lie, but the business of the Nazis includes, it seems, the feeding of the elephants in the room.

Albrecht is a sensitive, tender contrast to Friedrich’s muscular fighter persona. When Albrecht takes Friedrich home for the holidays, his Nazi father is very impressed with the boxer, while denigrating and humiliating his own son. At a party in the father’s honor, Albrecht wants to read the poem he has written for the occasion, but the very mention of the word “poem” causes the father to pale and the table to fall in uncomfortable silence. The boy’s creativity is dismissively relegated to another time and place.

When the boys are sent out to catch Russian spies in the nearby woods on their first mission with live ammunition, Albrecht is horrified to realize they have shot four wandering children. He tried to stem the blood of the one who is still alive, until his father appears and shoots the child dead. Albrecht refuses to stay quiet about this crime, although Friedrich wishes he would. The two boys argue and fight. The wrestling turns to adoring caresses and their love becomes explicit.

The physical and moral challenges to which they are subjected in the school’s attempt to transform them into Nazi leaders are more than Albrecht can take. His decision to die is painfully moving and pushes Friedrich past the edge of self-interest into a sense of right and wrong. He refuses to box for the Reich and is tossed out into the snow.

Beautifully filmed and strongly directed by Gansel (also the co-author with Maggie Peren), “Before The Fall” uses a slowing of motion to highlight the young characters’ process of grappling with moral confusion, as they begin to comprehend the horror of the regime that has chosen them to perpetuate this foulness. Although taking a stand invites catastrophic consequences, these young men make the hard decisions and pay the steep price of decency.•••

Sue Katz is a contributor to the national network EDGE.