Abstract
The film Valkyrie (2008) is a thriller that explores the religious basis of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the last year of the Second World War. While the political motivations are clearly stated in exposition and dialogue, the religious motivations are shown through a series of images, symbols, and dramatic uses of the word “sacred” (heilig and its derivatives). The filmmakers focus on Colonel von Stauffenberg’s struggle against the Nazi conception of the sacred, revealing his Christian sense of the sacred as a basis for his resistance. The religious elements in the film provide a pulse to the thriller that enables audiences to understand why the conspirators would risk everything—including their lives, the lives of their loved ones, and their good names after death—to follow their consciences and do the best they could to free Germany from Hitler’s grip. In this way, the filmmakers carefully explore the religious motivations to resist in Nazi Germany, with the minimal use of words, and in a manner that perfectly suited the genre to the thriller.
Highlights
Despite the quick pace of the film, the filmmakers have taken the time to provide a poignant exploration of the sacred as a basis for the conspirators’ motivations to resist
The film Valkyrie (2008) is a thriller that explores the religious basis of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in the last year of the Second World War
While the political motivations are clearly stated in exposition and dialogue, the religious motivations are shown through a series of images, symbols, and dramatic uses of the word “sacred”
Summary
Valkyrie is one of several notable films of Nazi resistance produced in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Resistance films explore the motivations that inspired men and women to resist, even when success seemed almost assuredly futile They explore questions such as: What is the nature, meaning, and cost of resistance in a totalitarian state when any act of non-conformity was conspicuous and could endanger one’s self but one’s family, circle of friends and acquaintances, and even strangers? These films are opportunities for audiences to consider what they would do in similar circumstances—they provide an avenue for the vicarious living out the moral courage that each of us hopes lies within Films like these are sure to remain popular, given the multitude of stories of resistance in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Other critics have argued that the film does not explore Stauffenberg’s motivations, aside from disgust of Nazi crimes committed against Jews and civilians. the film subtly presents the religious motivations as foundational for their actions and as necessary for the viewers to make sense of the risks they voluntarily took in the coup d’état
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