Ouh, it's so emotional, can you feel it? these hard times? man, i really like Dennis Gansel's approach to commercial stuff and even more his co-writer's Peren. but yesterday i saw I'm receiving the Bavarian film award for "best director" and he said, that he always wondered and never understood why so many Germans felt attracted by the Nazis. mmh, i always thought director's do have a bigger imagination, but so what - his conclusion : sons didn't get enough respect from their fathers and did like sports and uniforms, is after all not THAT surprising, eh? NApola tells his story from the similar naive,not very interesting point of view "Der Untergang" did recently. in fact a lot of critics etc. always wanted German films to be more like professional entertaining Hollywood stuff - here it is. Napola is not boring. Well acted. BUT the friendship of the main characters is not convincing, unless you understand it as a kind of "Love at first sight" homo-couple. (Why NOt? But I'm afraid Gansel didn't get it). There's no scene showing the meaning of their friendship - even the one stroll in the snow lasts just a few seconds in a very distant shot. Maybe they cut a lot to be more effective in a commercial sense, whatever. AND the "Farewell-SCENE" on the ice is really bad. Riemelt spend so much time with crying and screaming, you wonder why he didn't try to get back in the water to help his friend. The Points of view "Through but not really through the ice" is after all the worst moment in a movie. They chose "the beauty shot" instead of being real in this moment... All in all, not bad, could have been much better without less commercial value.
Review of Before the Fall
