Mark Reviews Movies: FINAL ACCOUNT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 20, 2021

When the interview subjects start talking, there doesn't seem to be much new in Final Account. The people are among the last generation of Germans who lived during the era of the Nazis. Some of them were just civilians. Some were in the military, and the late director Luke Holland (who died at the age of 71, just after completing the film) even arranged interviews with surviving members of the SS, the Nazi regime's arm of surveillance, terror, and murder.

The running theme of these interviews—at the start, at least—is that all of these people claim they were afraid or ignorant. All of them were children as the Nazis rose and teenagers when Adolf Hitler came to power. Their parents were the true believers in the Nazis' politics and policies of racial superiority, or the younger versions of these now-elderly people were just caught up in the widespread programs of indoctrination.

One says that a school teacher was an early proponent of the Nazis, and the teacher wouldn't stop talking about those politics, until the student couldn't help but believe them in some way. Others speak of being forced to participate in the Hitler Youth, where they made friends, enjoyed dressing in a nice uniform, and finally had a chance to play in parks and other places that previously had been off-limits to such entertainment.

These people didn't necessarily want to become Nazis. Indeed, many of them, despite actual documentation to the contrary, continue to insist that they weren't. They grew up in and with the rise of Nazism in Germany, so what blame, really, can be placed on them?

There's an air of suspicion surrounding these stories. Surely, we believe these claims to some degree. Holland intercuts the interviewees with archival footage and photographs of Germany under increasing Nazi influence and power. Undoubtedly, most of us want to believe that, if living under such an obviously evil and authoritarian form of government, we would resist such a system.

When they start talking, some of these interview subjects put that belief to the test, because they didn't resist. They were, understandably, fearful and/or unaware of what was to come—succumbing to the pressure of adults and people of their own age. If they did vocally disagree or fight back against any of the rising violence, they would almost certainly be killed, too.

Rather wisely, Holland remains a mostly passive participant behind the camera in his own film—again, at the start of these interviews, at least. He wants these people to talk freely and openly—to recall their memories, to make their cases, to give us some understanding of how such a system of dominion and murder could rise with the willing participation of so many. As the interviews—intercut among each other with a chronological and geographical narrative in mind—continue, the little holes in these stories become bigger and bigger.

All of that truly begins with an interview at a hospital, near the location of a former concentration camp. Holland speaks to a group of older people, sitting and waiting, who have lived in this place their entire lives. He asks about the camp—what they saw, what they heard, what they knew.

One woman insists she knew nothing of what was happening there. The story quickly changes to her saying that there were rumors about horrors and crimes of the camp. It evolves to a recollection of a particular smell coming from the camp and knowing that smell was of burning bodies. She remembers when American soldiers liberated the camp (and how afraid the locals were that the prisoners would attack them, which certainly seems like an odd thing to suspect, if she really had no idea what was happening in that place), and she recalls all the SS officers in charge of the camp being arrested, fleeing, or hiding. She knows that last part intimately. After all, her boyfriend at the time was one of those officers, and she let him hide in her home until the hunt for those officers ended.

This interview, seen uninterrupted from beginning to end, is the real core of Holland's documentary. It isn't about the excuses or the rationalizations or the justifications of these people. It's about the truth—or the evasion of it. It's also about what that means about these people, both back then and now, as Germany still deals with a sense of guilt about what happened in the past and as forces and ideologies within the country—and, indeed, throughout the entire world—move closer and closer to denying or embracing the horrors of the past.

Another vital scene sees a former member of the Nazi military speaking to students about the era. One student confronts the man, insisting that he has no reason to feel guilty about what happened in the past and arguing his case with racist, xenophobic rhetoric. The older man nearly breaks down in tears, realizing that his warning might be in vain.

Some of these people, like the man pleading that the younger generation recognize and dismiss the beliefs that resulted in the murder of millions, have learned the lessons of the past through which they lived. Others continue to rationalize it, trying to distance themselves from what they did or allowed to happen. Some deny the facts of history entirely. One man, a former SS officer who maintains his collection of documents and awards, goes so far as to continue praising Hitler.

Final Account may be the last testimony of this particular generation. The film, though, suggests a story that is, lamentably, far from finished.

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