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Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Zeitgeist Films


9.2

based on 30 reviews
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based on 29 votes
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MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Julia Jentsch, Fabian Hinrichs, Gerald Alexander Held, Johanna Gastdorf, André Hennicke, Florian Stetter, Johannes Suhm, and Maximilian Brückner

The true story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in Germany's official Foreign Language Film selection for the 2005 Academy Awards. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the young coed-turned-fearless activist. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl's life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence. (Zeitgeist Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Fred Breinersdorfer
DIRECTED BY:	Marc Rothemund
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: November 14, 2006 Theatrical: February 17, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	117 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Germany
LANGUAGE(S):	German (with English subtitles)

Original title "Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage"; Nominated, Best Foreign Language Film of the Year (Germany), 78th Annual Academy Awards

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Throughout, Sophie exhibits the quality common to all of history's great martyrs, a preternatural calmness that perseveres despite (or perhaps because of) the inevitability of her doom.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's an authentic, harrowing tale of heroism.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Sophie Scholl plods along inexorably, one step after another, to its grim, sad end. It's almost unbearable.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The film is a shattering experience fueled by Jentsch's electrifying performance.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

While the film doesn't dig deep, or hit particularly hard, it neatly achieves its modest goals: presenting a real-life heroine in real-life terms. A film this fictionalized rarely feels this much like fact.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Rothemund's use of the recorded testimony, while it gives his film a startling veracity, also limits his imagination. It prevents him from delving too deeply into the psychology of these activists.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Julia Jentsch strong and graceful, quiet knockout of a performance is the film's most potent weapon.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days may sound like a history lesson, but don't be fooled. It's a horror film.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's a crisply made, absorbing human drama that frames its moral confrontation between good and evil in universal terms.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Rock solid performances by up-and-coming German actress Julia Jentsch as Sophie and Alexander Held ("Downfall") as Mohr along with an excellent cast of supporting players insure that no one mistakes this for a lifeless docu-drama.

Variety Derek Elley

An ace performance by 26-year-old Julia Jentsch ("The Edukators," "Snowland"), as the quietly determined Munich student who was beheaded for distributing counter-propaganda leaflets in 1943, gives pic a focused dramatic power.

Village Voice Leslie Camhi

A life so tragically and quickly extinguished presents maudlin temptations, but director Marc Rothemund ably resists them. His gripping, moving film focuses on a breathtakingly brief five-day period.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

This gripping true story, directed in a cool, semi-documentary style by the German filmmaker Marc Rothemund from a screenplay by Fred Breinersdorfer, challenges you to gauge your own courage and strength of character should you find yourself in similar circumstances.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

Though we know the story's final outcome, the trial scene and its aftermath are no less shocking and affecting.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Julia Jentsch offers a brilliant example of what actors call "not playing the ending," and the awful suspense of the piece is watching as she realizes, in increments, that this is all much worse than she thought.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Everything about Sophie Scholl screams "martyr" and "saint." Jentsch will have none of it. Hers is a performance of supreme emotional control, yet clear emotional fire. The actress makes the icon human.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Rothemund gives us his sophisticated filmmaking only in the finale, which is devastating in its briskness and fury.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The orderly and clean drama is more like theater than history come to life.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The effect of this scene is so powerful that I leaned forward like a jury member, wanting her to get away with it so I could find her innocent.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Sophie Scholl is a powerful story. But it's a little annoying how men become beside the point when the focus is on emotion. Sophie did no more or less than her brother, but he's ignored for nearly all of the movie because it's easier to stir up compassion - it's easier to manipulate the audience - when the subject is a woman.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Sophie Scholl has a certain quiet dignity that wins its audience popularity honestly.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Sophie Scholl is the subject of a feature film that has earned an Oscar nomination for a Germany she would have loved to live in.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The script is so intellectualized that I couldn't help feeling I was witnessing not two complex people locked in struggle, but the opposed souls (and classes) of Germany: Sophie, emblem of the cultured, tolerant and enlightened humanism of the middle classes duking it out with Mohr, resentful member of a disenfranchised proletariat from whose ranks sprang Hitler's most loyal quislings.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Modest in scale but formidable in its impact.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Sophie Scholl is not as devastatingly moving as "The White Rose," but it, too, evokes awe in lesser beings.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Andre Hennicke is particularly chilling as the yappy mad dog judge who sends them to death.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

After she's forced to confess, director Marc Rothemund doesn't have much to do but marvel at her heroic defiance, and the film is overtaken by its talkiness, claustrophobia, and polarized morality.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Powerfully rendered in every respect - and another testament to how bad the Nazis are for drama.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

For most U.S. audiences, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, an Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, is going to feel more like a history lesson than a movie.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.2 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

L K. gave it a9:
A great gift for the kid going to college. Question everything. Know what you believe---and WHY. Then, you, like Sophie Scholl, will know when you must stand up against injustice.

V K. gave it a9:
This woman (only 21-22) is one of the most admired persons in Germany. The best part is when she verbally faces off against an experienced Gestapo interrogator!

Philip P. gave it a10:
A human drama without any added film dramatizations and all the more chilling because of it. This could happen today in any country unless the people are aware.

Buttered Popcorn gave it a10:
Engrossing and captivating. Uplifting and resolute throughout, this movie is about the triumph of principles and ideals over politics and circumstance. The scenes involving the interrogation of Sophie are so masterfully crafted that you come to realize that in fact, the balance of power has tipped to Sophie's advantage through the shear strength of her resoluteness and integrity. And not enough can be said for the exquisite attention to nuance and detail, giving the movie a taut sense of precison and purpose. A rare treat, wonderfully told, marvellously understated, and just brimming with meaning. Like one of the previous reviewers - this is my favorite movie of the year as well.

Marc K. gave it a6:
Very talky, with not much else going on. I'm sure it's very faithful to what actually occurred, but I wasn't entertained.

Lyle M. gave it a10:
Excellent movie. Wonderful "conflict" scenes. So far, my "best movie" of the year.

Ken G. gave it a9:
Poignant, inspiring story that sends the important message that going to war for your country, or supporting your country isn't the only way to be a patriot. Sometimes a patriot is the person who stands up to their country and saids "NO!", when their country is doing wrong. And no, the United States today is no where close to what Nazi Germany was. But if we wait to we are close, or have gone too far down that road before we say no, then it will be too late. The idea is to speak out when we are just starting down that road.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days Zeitgeist Films

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Zeitgeist Films