Another movie from the EU Film Festival; and this was Germany's entry for the Best Foreign Film award at the Oscars this year. The plot is about Sophie Scholl and other members of "The White Rose", a anti-Nazi German, mainly student movement, in operation near the end of the WW2. What was interesting about many members of the The White Rose, was that most of them had actually spent time at the front lines; or were intimately connected to the front lines. The movie recounts the last days of The White Rose; from the arrest of Sophie Scholl (and her brother Hans), her interrogation, the show trial and finally the execution.
What is really amazing is the dialogue, and the arguments - not only by Sophie Scholl, on why Hitler's war strategy was wrong, and the war needed to end; but also the Nazi arguments; on why their course of action was correct - and would ultimately succeed. It is an intellectual debate that makes the movie worthwhile. But it is also the stark difference in arguments between the interrogator - whose arguments are philosophical and largely logical; and the judge (and chief prosecutor rolled into one) at the show trial - whose arguments are basically propaganda and righteous beliefs; that make it so interesting.
In many ways; the arguments are like present day Iraq situation; the Israeli-Palestinians conflict or indeed the Iranian Nuclear Enrichment tug of war ... both sides in the disputes have perfectly logical arguments; but these are all drowned by the rhetoric and the passionate preaching, often by both sides. It seems that, history truly repeats itself, often.
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