Customer Reviews

Napola (2004) (AKA Before the Fall)

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Since these times of 1965 with the acclaimed film "The Young Torless", we had witnessed such devastating gaze around the rise of the Nazism until this film came to me, ten years ago. "Napola" is a bold and courageous film. It deals with the first encounter of a teenager when is recruited to be part of a Nazi elite whose main purpose is to sculpt new volunteers into the rigid scheme. To obey and become beings under the service of the maxim leader.

Friedrich is a future promise of the box who will meet Albrecht, a refined, cult and sensitive human being who simply doesn't agree with the basic principles of the Nazism. This fortuity encounter will sustain this enigmatic plot loaded of drama, and tension, when both worlds collapse.

One of the ten best films of 2006!

"NAPOLA" is the abbreviation of a political Nazi school for young people in Nazi Germany, 1942. The students are selected not for a deep intellectual work, but to become the future leaders of a World ruled by the Nazis, this is, men of action without moral scruples and giving more importance to the fight sports than learning sciences or literature.
These boys, mostly teenagers, are submitted to a iron discipline, but still so, there are two, the first a promising boxer, and the second a more introspective one which question the purpose of that terrible school.
They get to manage rifles, hand grenades and are made to kill some unfortunate Russian boys in a forest.
Well, and I can say when I was a child in Spain, this is 50- 45 years ago, I did my bachelor in a religious catholic school very similar to NAPOLA. You only need to change the Nazis by Catholic priests, as that college was a religious one. I can say the only difference was I didn't manage a rifle nor kill anyone, but for me, these priests should have passed a trial as Nuremberg.