"Napola" or "Before the Fall" is a 110-minute German movie from over 10 years ago. Writer and director is Dennis Gansel (around 30 at this point), pretty famous for "The Wave" and this one here is his breakthrough film (unless you already count the abysmal "Mädchen Mädchen!". Gansel has worked a lot with Riemelt in his career, so it's no surprise that he also plays the main character in here. Still, I am not sold on Riemelt after having seen many of his movies. I believe with another lead actor this may have been a really strong movie and contender for best German film of 2004. Tom Schilling, who's a pretty big star today, easily gives the more convincing performance as the soft-spoken son of a well-respected Nazi official, who realizes how wrong his father's deeds are.The best scenes were probably the ones with the sports teacher. They were really baity written, but also gave a crass insight into the methods of operation at the training camp. The popular Nazi message of natural selection, even at the most cruel circumstances, is even more present in here than usual. We follow a young man who has a talent for boxing and may dream of the Olympic Games when he gets recruited for this training camp. The first scene at the camp was already very telling. He tells the officer right away that he left without his dad's permission, but even fakes his dad's signature. The Nazi officer acts negatively and surprised, but in the end he does not hesitate to accept the boy's presence instead of sending him home. A crime here and there is okay if it serves the Fuehrer and Vaterland. And the irony in how he tells him about honesty and obedience, while he himself is dishonest that very moment is priceless. I believe the film's biggest strength is the script. Moments of greatness are rare, but Gansel managed to come up with a screenplay that almost never drags and that is a decent achievement for a film that runs for almost 2 hours. I enjoyed the watch and everybody who likes Nazi-themed films should check it out. And if you already have, take a look at "Berlin' 36", which is sort-of the female-centered version of "Napola". Thumbs up and I recommend it.

This is one of the only films I've seen that deals with these schools, until recently a subject that remained taboo. National Political Education Institute is the literal translation of what the title is an acronym of. The lead is portraying a Hitler Jugend("youth"), one of the people indoctrinated as a child. He now enters a NaPolA, and we experience this microcosm of collective punishment and a limited curriculum. This reminded me a lot of Onskan("Evil"). The relationship(which I would not deem to be homosexual in the least, I'm not sure why anybody thinks that it is; well, to each his own) between the two main guys is very convincing, and they have good chemistry. Every acting performance, including those of the kids, is excellent. Many of the characters are credibly written, although the presentation of the Nazi leaders is relatively one-sided. While I don't know if the boxing is authentic(with that said, it may very well be, and there are a ton of accurate details in this), it definitely is a perfect metaphor for the lack of humanity that the Third Reich tried to breed in their soldiers, and it is immensely intense(and other bits are, as well; there is great tension in this), and really puts you in the moment through the filming and editing. In general this is well-produced. The sense of humor is marvelous, and fitting in tone and amount. There is a lot of disturbing content and a little brutal, bloody violence and male nudity in this. I recommend this to anyone who wants to explore this specific area and time period of history. 8/10

This is a superb film - miraculous performances from the whole cast, especially Max Riemelt and Tom Schilling. Script, direction, lighting, camera-work, editing, sound effects and music are wonderful. It's a spellbinding film of extraordinary emotional power and haunting in its beauty.I'll just make a few of points no one else has mentioned. You may remember that Alfred Hitchcock used to make cameo appearances in his films. They were jokey and lasted only a few seconds. Well, the director of this film, Dennis Gansel, also appears in an acting role. Only he's serious, not jokey. If you look at the beginning of Napola you'll see Dennis Gansel takes on the role of the coach at the boxing club. He makes a disparaging remark about the Napola students who are present and turns away in disgust when Friedrich agrees to try to join the academy. Thus the director subtly signals to us the attitude he's going to take throughout the film.One of the things this film shows is why Nazism was so attractive to many young Germans. The Nazis knew how to target young people and play on youthful idealism. They used this idealism as a cover for their murderous agenda. They not only coerced people; they seduced them. Gansell shows this seduction at work. Someone once said Hitler was a gangster, but a gangster with style. When it came to style the Nazis had few rivals. Even today their ceremonies, festivals, rallies, buildings, cars, fighting machines and uniforms excite awe. Many young Germans found them irresistible. The Nazis seemed cool. The Hitler Youth wore designer uniforms. The black uniforms we see the Napola boys wearing were designed in the 1930s by a German fashion house that still exists - Hugo Boss. The firm also designed the black uniforms of the SS!Nazi Germany was a country in uniform. It changed the way people looked, felt and acted. A key moment in the film is when Friedrich first puts on his black designer uniform - complete with a so-called 'dagger of honour' worn on the left hip - and stares at himself proudly in a mirror. Overjoyed, he goes down to the assembly hall and finds himself surrounded by dozens of cadets all wearing black designer uniforms. He is now - he thinks - part of the elite.Napola is a subtle and multi-layered film that deserves repeated viewings. Gansel avoids the mistake of overloading his movie with dialogue. The script is terse. Sometimes there are few, or no words at all as he lets the pictures tell the story. Things are hinted at and not spelt out and it's possible to miss them on first viewing. But they're all there. For example, it took me time to realise that Albrecht is not only Friedrich's friend. He's also the conscience of the film - the moral centre. He gets inside Friedrich's mind and changes the way the young boxer thinks about the Napola and the Nazis.Then there's the look of the film. The movie is set in the late summer, autumn and winter of 1942. The Third Reich was past the high summer of its success - 1940 - and was now entering the autumn of its years. This is reflected in the retro lighting and colours of the film. Nearly all the colours are autumnal, or wintry - brown, khaki, green, blue, black, white. The only bright colour in the film is red - the red of the Nazi flags and banners, the red of the Nazi armbands, and the colour of human blood.Dennis Gansel comes at the Nazis from new angles and provides valuable insights into the German mind. Although a former cadet rubbishes Napola on this site many of the things Gansel describes in his movie really happened. You can compare his film with a TV documentary series on Nazi education on YouTube. It's called 'Hitler's Children.' Episode 2 - Education - deals with Napolas. It contains archive film from the 1930s and '40s and interviews with former cadets. Incidentally, many Napola cadets who survived the war rose to become respected members in the new Germany. One became a famous actor - Hardy Kruger. He starred in many British and American films, as well as German movies. Kruger attended the Napola at Sonthofen. While training Kruger and two other cadets had to hack two holes in the thick ice of a frozen lake. The holes were 10 yards apart and the cadets had to climb into one hole and swim under to ice to the other.There are various DVD editions of Dennis Gansel's movie Napola - some with no features, others with interviews and documentaries. The German edition contain the most deleted scenes, interviews with the cast, and a director's commentary which I desperately want to understand. Unfortunately everything is in German. I speak only English! There are no subtitles. Could I make a plea to Dennis Gansel to issue a two-disc special edition (with subtitles in various languages) bringing together all the interviews, features etc that are scattered across the various editions. Also any other material he has about this remarkable film lurking in his archives. And we need it on Blu-ray please.As a general point - many of Max Riemelt's films exist only in German editions. They have no subtitles. I think they would have a much wider audience if they did.Incidentally, Max speaks good English. He has a delightful German accent, tinged with American sounds. I'm writing this review some years after Napola appeared and he's made many films since. Surely it's about time a British or American director discovered Max and put him in a movie. He could play a German character speaking in English. I'm sure he'd have a great impact.

This film's title, NaPolA is the acronym for "National-politische Erziehungs-Anstalt" or "National Political Education Institute" - a group of boarding schools established in Hitler's Germany to mold the elite of the future German grand society. It is stated in the film that the young men who attend these schools will be the future governors of such places as London and New York. For some reason, those "in the know" have chosen to give the film the mundane title Before the Fall for its existence here in the United States. NaPolA is a fairly predictable coming-of-age story, but its story's location in history, excellent acting, and superior production values give it five stars in my mind.The film begins in 1942 where we meet Friedrich Weimer, a young boxer of extraordinary talent who seems destined to follow in the footsteps of his working-class father and slave away his life in the factory. His boxing talent is witnessed by an official of a NaPolA, and he is given the opportunity of enrollment in the school. Friedrich is thrilled with the prospect of attending such an elite school, but his father is as dead set against it as he is disdainful of what the Nazis are doing to Germany. Friedrich forges his father's signature on the application and leaves for the school.The scene in which Friedrich is getting his physical for entry into the institute made my skin crawl. You see, Friedrich - played by Max Riemelt - is a perfect physical specimen by Nazi standards. His facial features are measured, and his hair and eye colors are compared to numbered standards. As these features are recorded, we see his mentors in the background slyly smiling at their perfect super human - creepy. The director, in this understated scene, expertly portrays the racial evil that was Nazism.Friedrich meets another student, Albrecht Stein - played by Tom Schilling - who is a sensitive writer. Albrecht has been enrolled by his father, the governor of the institute, and is not as enamored of the system as is Friedrich. These two opposites form a deep friendship. Needless-to-say, events occur that cause both boys - especially Friedrich - to examine their attitudes toward the system.As stated before, the plot line of the film is fairly predictable but the overall quality of the film causes it to rise far above that plot line. The boxing scenes in the film are superior. In the extra feature on the DVD, the director states that Max Riemelt is a boxer and was instrumental in making those scenes so powerful. The director's quest, inspired by his grandfather who actually attended a NaPolA, was also to make the events in the film as accurate as possible. In that quest, he hired a technical adviser who had attended one of the institutes. It is interesting to see the adviser putting the actors through their paces demanding unquestioning performance from these young men of today much in same way it was required of the actual young men some sixty-plus years ago.Striking, distinctive uniforms and the thoughts of honor and glory are so very alluring to young men in their late teens. NaPolA effectively reminds us of how that allure can be directed for the benefit of evil. This is one of the many excellent German films that shatter us with the harsh reality of what was Nazi Germany - truly effective use of the lessons of history.