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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
During his brief visit to New York this summer, the 32-year-old Gansel tells me he first learned about the Napolas, which remain little-known even to scholars of the Nazi period, from conversations with his own grandfather, who had been a student at one of the elite academies and remained close to his schoolmates for the rest of his life. Then, in making his 2001 film, "Das Phantom," Gansel discovered how many of the schools' alumni had later assumed important positions in German society.
"There was a terrorist group called the Red Army Faction that killed Alfred Herrhausen, the CEO of Deutsche Bank, in 1989," Gansel says. "He was a very powerful industrial manager and he was a former Napola student. I thought this was pretty interesting: The most powerful man in European finance was once trained to be the Nazi governor of Chicago. That was the first time I had heard about that, and it turned out that a lot of the German power structure in the '60s, '70s and '80s came out of the Napolas. There were a lot of journalists, a lot of lawyers, a lot of CEOs. Many of them are still alive. There is still an active old boys' network. It's not a Nazi network, as far as I can tell. But it's an old boys' network. And the story of the Napolas is totally unknown in Germany today."
Friedrich's dilemma, Gansel says, is the same one that many Germans faced under Nazism -- but most lacked his moral courage. In "Before the Fall" Friedrich becomes a sort of Christ-like figure, forced to choose between the tremendous worldly power of evil on one hand, and torment and humiliation on the other. If Friedrich and Albrecht stand for something, it's the small minority of Germans who actively (if not very effectively) resisted the Nazi regime.
"It was interesting to work out their different modes of resistance," Gansel says. Albrecht, whom the director sees as a representative of the 19th century heritage of German philosophy and poetry, "resists in the only way that follows his own character -- he does it in an intellectual way." Friedrich, on the other hand, is a favorite of the governor, Albrecht's father. When he tries to protest the brutal killings in the woods, the governor interrupts him to say, "Call me Heinrich," and Friedrich is left speechless.
"This is really about seduction," Gansel says. "Friedrich needs more time, and he needs tremendous courage, because his form of resistance is physical. It takes a long time, until the moment during his final boxing match when all the governors and officers are standing and clapping for him, in their uniforms, telling him, 'Yeah, you're on the right track.' Then he finally says, 'OK, enough.' I think this is believable. I don't believe films where people say immediately, 'Oh, I see that this is wrong. I will say no.' I don't think it works that way."
The film's depiction of the Napola atmosphere and curriculum has been rigorously researched; Gansel and his co-writer Maggie Peren drew math problems and science lectures from genuine Napola textbooks, and borrowed numerous incidents from the accounts of Gansel's grandfather and other former students. In fact, Gansel says he has portrayed his grandfather in the film, in the character of Vogler (Devid Striesow), a decent and in many ways honorable officer who nonetheless never resists the thickening evil around him. He sympathizes with Friedrich over the incident in the woods, and the inevitable destruction of Albrecht, but encourages him to focus on his boxing and his education.
"You ask yourselves, why did they follow?" Gansel says. "Why did someone like my grandfather follow these people? Nazis in films are always bad, evil people. But that's not the way it worked at the time. They were intelligent, sometimes eloquent, charming, good-looking. Vogler can understand Friedrich in a way: He tells him, 'It's bad what happened in the woods -- but think of yourself and continue.' That's what millions and millions of Germans did. They knew something. They knew it was wrong. But they continued."
"Before the Fall" opens Oct. 7 in New York and Chicago, Nov. 11 in Los Angeles, and Dec. 2 in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, Fla., with more cities to be announced.
