NaPolA is the acronym of "National Political Education Institute"
which is a kind of elitist school Nazi-Germany has built as training
ground for the future governing elite. It's a place for the boys
— I know what you are thinking, but no — where they
come as boys, and leave as men. Rather like your one-night-stands,
no?

Born in a deprived working class family, Federich Weimer (Aryan
beauty Max Riemelt) wants desperately to escape the poverty and
a prospectless life in the gutters. He sees entering the NaPolA
as a means of securing a future, despite the resistance of his anti-fascist
father. Those who hit the clubs every so often, perhaps mistaking
it for the ROM, can surely empathise. His counterpart is the thin
and pensive Albrecht Stein (twinkly Tom Schilling), an aspiring
poet forced into the regime by the ever domineering Pater and Mater.

Though the two boys came from different background and possess
different strengths (one a fighter, the other a thinker), they establish
an immediate friendship that will lead them down a painful rite
of passage.

In the same veins as the recent Hitler biopic Downfall,
it is a film which clearly grapples with the guilt of a nation haunted
by nefarious past deeds. Napola is populated by humanly
complex characters as opposed to simplistic caricatures, and this
is the captivating part of the film. No less absorbing is the strong
acting of Riemelt and Schilling, who managed to convey the subtlest
emotion in the terse interplay of expressions that fleet across
their no less youthful, and beautiful faces.

Napola is a solid piece of filmmaking: artless in its
convictions, generous in its humanity, and lush in all aspects of
its production designs. Viewers might also find pleasure in the
many potentially homoerotic scenes of boys exerting their youthful
bodies in sports or displays of brotherly camaraderie. And uniforms
are just so sexy, aren't they? A must-see!