Stirring look at student dissent in Nazi Germany

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/movies/reviews/3784094.html

Student dissent doesn't spring to mind when we think of Nazi Germany, which was better known for its darkly single-minded purpose.

Yet we see another side of it in Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, a wrenching, fact-based drama with pertinence for today.

Set in 1943 Munich, the German-language film concerns university students who secretly write, print and distribute leaflets condemning the war, which they rightly predict will bring their nation to its knees.

As the title suggests, they do so at a horrible price. While furtively placing leaflets outside classrooms, the activists are spotted by a janitor who turns them in. Soon Sophie (Julia Jentsch), brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) and friend Christoph (Florian Stetter) face the Gestapo, a harsh judge and the threat of quick execution.

Their stirring allegiance to conscience over self-preservation rings loudly in today's climate of anti-war dissent and even more loudly echoes the Vietnam War's passionate repudiation by American students in the '60s and '70s.

No college activism until 1943? God, I hope we're not headed down the same road.