FROM THE FIRST FRAME ONWARD, the directors of A German Life never really leave much doubt that they regard the case of Brunhilde Pomsel as a moral allegory, and that they intend for us to judge their subject harshly. The promotional website for the film claims that it “forces viewers to ask themselves what they would have done and whether they would have sacrificed any possible moral principles in order to advance their careers.” But it is not clear that Pomsel made many choices to begin with, nor does the film convey much of a sense of personal moral sacrifice. As A German Life opens, we are instead treated to a silent study of a 103-year-old woman, shot in high contrast black and white. There is something reptilian about her craggy skin, and before we ever hear her utter a single word, we see her face in profile and watch her swallow in an attempt to clear her throat. At that moment, the camera lends her a profound resemblance to a turtle. The overall impression is one of coldblooded moral sluggishness.

These opening shots should give us pause. The desire to deduce moral character from external appearances is entirely human, but, needless to say, also exceptionally dangerous. Whatever else she may be, Pomsel is also a centenarian and her external appearance should be treated as nothing more than a symptom of her advanced age. To the extent that aging can be defined as a slow-acting terminal disease, the filmmakers’ attempts to fill it with metaphysical meaning illustrate Susan Sontag's famous warning not to treat illness as a metaphor. It was Sontag also who pointed out how the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl used strategically deployed images of her own “imperishable beauty” in old age to distract from a meaningful engagement with fascist aesthetics. The current film's heavily aestheticized and moralized depiction of Pomsel has a very similar effect, and it would be interesting to compare A German Life to Ray Müller's 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, which also puts great emphasis on the external appearance of its nonagenarian subject.

Moral judgment rather than the attempt to invite critical reflection also seems to motivate the film's use of numerous inset propaganda clips.