“Oliver watched, observed, and was not surprised. From the very outset he had recognized the great inferiority of these men to the work which they were supposed to be accomplishing: but he had also recognized the inevitable force that swept them on… The current would have nothing to do with himself, who would have asked nothing better than to be carried away.”
More than a hundred years ago, Romain Rolland painted the portrait of a prevailing labor worker’s movement from the eyes of Oliver, a young French bourgeoisie. The uniqueness of the perspective had always touched me, given that the writer, Rolland, was strongly left-winged himself.
As powerful currents symbolizing collectivism sweep through the society, Oliver, a fair spirit of individualism, rests alone on the shore. Fates of others surge up or plunge down in front of his eyes – it is a sea of opportunity, an era of heroes. But he merely sits there, pained by his own perception, lost in his own thoughts. His hands, free of sand and mud, appear so clean.
And the clash between an observer and a participator, the outcast of individualism by society… these well explored literary themes once again constructed NAPOLA, a beautiful drama set in Hitler’s Germany. After all, Fascism was one of the strongest social currents that ever swept through modern history.
NAPOLA stood for National Political Institutes of Education. As a secondary boarding school, the organization sought to provide a new generation for the political, military and administrative leadership in the Nazi state. As a matter of fact, it was Hitler himself who came up with the idea of selecting young elites solely by talents, regardless of their social economical background, from which schools like Eton College derived so much pride. This passionate practice of social justice, alongside with numerous other National Socialism policies, won the Führer hearty support from the German youth.
Our two heroes in NAPOLA came from vastly different backgrounds: Friedrich, a factory worker’s son, was a promising youth with tough and realistic personality; Albrecht, the only child of an eminent Nazi Governor on the other hand, was everything but his father. Boyish innocence bonded them together, and together they strived to grow into Führer’s elites: it is a story about the beauty of youth, as well as the cruelty of growth.
I. Albrecht
This young boy carries a charming disharmony within himself, and it attracts the audience as a minor chord catches the ears, with all the richness and subtlety. His hair dark, his complexion pale, his features delicate, together with his introvert manners and eloquent eyes – such combination has made him as much of an outcast of the Arians as of the militants, yet he sat there in the chicly starched uniform of NAPOLA.
The essence of Totalitarianism, rather than genocide or war, lies in the assimilation of ego. Throughout history, Totalitarianism in all its forms had strived to put an end to the struggle between collectivism and individualism, as was tactfully mentioned in the welcoming speech of NAPOLA -- “Your body no longer belongs to yourself. It belongs to the nation, to the people, and above all, to the Führer.” When it comes to this invention, Nazi was far from being alone: an insightful picture of individuality in a Utopian society was offered by George Orwell in his 1984.
Unawares, Albrecht came across as a keen individualist. His love of writing betrays a strong ego, as writing is, above all, a hobby of self reflection; When Friedrich won the boxing match by knocking out the defenseless opponent on the rope, amidst a roomful of fanatic cheerers stood Albrecht, aloof and lost. His group won the match, he should have been happy. Besides, he knew the victim would have done the same if given a chance – you fight till K.O., that’s the NAPOLA rule. Yet he was still deeply disturbed. “Of course I’m happy for you,” said Albrecht to his best friend later on in the changing room, “I just wonder if there was an alternative way to win.”
During that scene, more than sympathy for a stranger, we get a deeper sense of the boy’s disregard to convention and devaluation of collective honor. His soul, like a pair of white sandals, rests on the shore of introspection, left alone by the panoramic current of a zealous world – to me, nothing else is more beautiful than that image, and nothing else further challenges the basis of tyranny.
I was deeply moved by the dialogue between Albrecht and Friedrich after the essay on German Sagas was read in front of the class.
F: Why did you have to write it?
A: I had no choice, just like you didn’t when you punched that trainer.
F: It’s different! You did not help anybody by doing so!
A: I did. I helped myself.
The ego of this shy and quiet child has long been bathing in fire, his struggles throbbing, his cries muffled. And yes, we are all animals of society; by no means have I intended to ignore the necessity of social compromising. But I could also see that a 16-year-old’s conscious, when tossed into the scorching flames of NAPOLA, would have to become either a Phoenix, or a handful of ash. There was not a third choice.
And it was the former that he chose. Thus on the wide screen we see Albrecht for the last time: shirtless and at ease in an icy pond, he looked even younger than his age.
Throughout the movie, until his death, Albrecht had always appeared well groomed in dazzling uniforms. I thought of the fact that uniform serves as an icon for social values, while one’s body and the soul inside only belongs to oneself.
As he went down, half-naked, unsullied, with his short hair loosely spread in water, the enigmatic dissonance that haunted the boy came to an end. It was only by suicide did he finally gain freedom, from a world of collective zeal.
II. Friedrich
The timeless aesthete that embodied Albrecht as well as his true ancestors, Goethe, Heine and LudwigⅡ, had to be deeply rooted in daily life, or else appears stagnant and hollow. Friedrich’s character served this purpose well. This young man looked, acted, even smelt like his time.
In the beginning of the story, Friedrich’s father had prohibited him from joining NAPOLA saying “those are different people from you and me”. He only woke up the next morning to find a note left by the son:
… Dear father, I falsified your signature. If you retrieve me from the school, I’ll announce what you have been saying about it.
Maybe my parents’ generation in China would find some resonance in this detail? Indeed it’s hard to overlook the interesting facts shared by various totalitarian governments throughout history: The rise of totalitarianism often benefits from the roiling of current social-economic hierarchy. It inflames rebellion from the young against the elderly, expedites promotion of the subordinates over the seniors. This social turmoil under the name of an idealistic revolution, having seeped into the personal aspects of life, specializes in demolishing family structures.
Here stood our young Arian hero: tall and blonde, fair and strong, he fit well into the ordinary definition of handsomeness. He was compassionate, honest, tough, and, most importantly, blessed with a lack of introspection.
Friedrich dwelled in a world without mirrors. The ice that claimed Albrecht’s life allowed him, for the first time, to greet his own soul. And one glance was enough to convert him for good, from a participator to a beholder.
Once the youth refused to participate in the game, he was out. I found it a cruel irony that Friedrich, having dismissed his own parents, having witnessed everything in NAPOLA, including the death of Cadet Gladen yet still choosing to compromise to the Führer’s doctrines, was finally abandoned by NAPOLA in such a disgrace. The very officer who announced “men make history, we make men” would not even spare him a pair of underwear on the way out, because, “your underwear belongs to NAPOLA as well”.
I was reminded of Riefanstel’s Olympia, a world famous documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympic. The camera seamlessly joined a long shot of ancient Greek statues into a scene of a naked, handsome German youth throwing disc, skillfully weaving Arian beauty into the Olympic spirits. The grand statement of Nazi aesthetics Riefanstel made proved irresistible to the art loving audience, winning her the Golden Lion in the 1938 Venice Film Festival. Even to this day, Nazi aesthetics with its idealization of human forms and ritual worship still appeals to our eyes.
But a beautiful body does not just accept worshiping; it also invites the harshest humiliation. Milan Kundera in his Unbearable Lightness of Being described a broken down mother who would not allow her daughter Teresa to lock the bathroom door when taking a shower, “for she insisted her daughter remain with her in a world of immodesty, where youth and beauty mean nothing, where the world is nothing but a vast concentration camp of bodies, one like the next, with souls invisible.”
The elitist officer who ordered Friedrich to march out naked, how he resembles Teresa’s mother – at a time without individuality, to deprive one of his uniform is to deprive him of his entire values and esteem. The youthful and beautiful body underneath the uniform means nothing by itself: the world is a vast concentration camp with bodies one like the next.
Nazis doctrines inevitably led to the complete obliteration of privacy, which defied the essence of Beauty, for beauty is a distinctive feature that belongs to individuals. As every single youth in every single Greek city had his own beauty, the ant-like Spartan could not be aesthetically judged without a personal identity.
Riefanstel should have seen that. During the latter years of Hitler’s reign, modern artists as Picasso and Van Gogh was banned, and the so called “Nazi aesthetics” had deteriorated fully into kitsch.
Naked, trembling with shame, Friedrich marched down a long, long hallway. It was only now did he understood why Albrecht had chosen to take his own life.
The surviving boy left the gates of NAPOLA in his ragged shirt brought from home. I thought I saw for the first time, true strength, as his lonely back figure faded into the vast outside world covered with snow.
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