Shoah

( 2 )

Overview

Shoah is an astonishing film on a number of levels, starting with its own existence -- a documentary on a subject so horrendous, and horrific, that few potential filmgoers really want to think much about it, or the events related within. But Jewish-French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann took the plunge, head-first into his subject, in the hope that the audience would follow for 570 minutes. And as it turned out, Lanzmann's extreme approach to filmmaking was precisely the correct one to take in dealing with his subject,...
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Overview

Shoah is an astonishing film on a number of levels, starting with its own existence -- a documentary on a subject so horrendous, and horrific, that few potential filmgoers really want to think much about it, or the events related within. But Jewish-French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann took the plunge, head-first into his subject, in the hope that the audience would follow for 570 minutes. And as it turned out, Lanzmann's extreme approach to filmmaking was precisely the correct one to take in dealing with his subject, the Nazi extermination of Europe's Jews from 1938 through 1945. At first, in its opening minutes, the documentary seems to be shaping up as a relentless parade of interviews, all done in the subjects' original languages and translated as audio live in front of the camera, as well as on-screen. But Shoah is a lot more than a succession of talk in multiple languages. Rather, Lanzmann did what one only wishes the Stuart Schulberg documentary Nuremberg (1947) could have done -- he brings us and many of his subjects (including some low-level perpetrators) to the sites of the crimes in question, so that we perceive the dimensions and settings when they tell of the vile acts of murder and desecration they were obliged to commit, or which were committed upon them or those around them (including family members -- in a quietly horrific moment, one survivor, recalls being forced to carry out the orders to hide a graveyard, and tells of finding the bodies of his own family in one layer of corpses). What's more, the calm of the talk, and the detachment brought about by the need for translation, has the eerie effect of making the nature of the film -- which is definitely not short of striking visuals in support of the interviews -- much more enveloping than one could possibly imagine it could ever be. Indeed, by taking a broad approach over a huge canvas, but keeping the moment-to-moment emotional intensity in check, Lanzmann ends up making the unthinkable into a manageable subject for purposes of his film, and delivers a movie that accomplishes the seemingly impossible. And in the process, gradually, one begins to comprehend the unthinkable in dimensions that those present, victims and participants alike -- based on the evidence of the survivors before us -- must have accepted at the time, which goes some way to explaining the seemingly unanswerable, of how the catastophic events at the film's center could have occurred. The sad answer, as one realizes about an eighth of the way through the movie, is that it happened in stages, and little steps taken in isolation, the latter being the key element -- most of the participants (though certainly not the planners or the major overseers) never realized precisely the dimensions of the horror in which they were complicit, or to which they were witness. Lanzmann's movie ends up presenting a revelatory account of the "how" behind the greatest international social horror of the twentieth century -- the why is better left to historians, social philosophers, and theologians.
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Special Features

New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Three additional films by director Claude Lanzmann: A Visitor from the Living (1999, 68 minutes); Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 P.M. (2001, 102 minutes); and The Karski Report (2010, 49 minutes); New conversation between Lanzmann and critic Serge Toubiana; Interview with Lanzmann from 2003 about A Visitor from the Living and Sobibór; New interview with Caroline Champetier, assistant camera person on Shoah, and filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin; Trailer; Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones and writings by Lanzmann
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Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder
Claude Lanzmann's Shoah is a unique document in the world of cinema, and an improbable one. Even immediately after the end of the Second World War, when the world was sorting itself out from the conflict and curious about the nature of the evil of the defunct Third Reich, there were social and political forces at work that militated against the excessive exposure of too much film on the Holocaust. And in the decades that followed, especially in the United States, apart from sanitized, prettified dramatizations such as the American television mini-series Holocaust, there was little impetus to generate much coverage of the subject for movie audiences; apart from a lack of commerciality, producers and distributors were increasingly concerned with stirring up audiences who were concerned with contemporary Middle Eastern politics surrounding the State of Israel. Into the midst of that political world of the 1980s came Lanzmann and his 570 minute documentary, more than a dozen years in the making and too much of a heavy lift for his original backers. Even after their withdrawal, he continued onward with his interviews and editing, ultimately delivering one a startling body of work -- Shoah is vast in its proportions, just under 10 hours long, yet delved into its subject on such personal and intimate terms that once one gets past the sheer dimension of the total film, it is absorbing on levels that are totally unexpected -- but not surprising, as Lanzmann, with the ambitious length, was willing to go where few directors and no producer before him had been prepared to tread. In taking a microscope to the accounts of survivors (and some ex-Nazis and Hitler supporters, as well as participants who carried out orders of the Nazis in order to stay alive), and letting them tell it in their own language, at their own pace, and within whatever zone-of-comfort there is to be found in relating such an account, the filmmaker reveals a larger, even more elusive truth than the grisly details contained within the recollections -- in the act of assembling these stories and presenting them, one realizes that one of the key mechanisms behind the Final Solution of the Hitler government was that most of the activity toward extermination was seen from the ground, not the air. That is, that while it was clear to the victims and those around them what was happening, their relative isolation, and the incredulity of anyone (especially on the Allied side) that such actions could be carried out on a mass-scale made it possible to do precisely that. In one fell swoop, Lanzmann's efforts thus provide a response to the Holocaust deniers and others who have questioned the reality of what happened in the decades since. Additionally, the low-key presentation of the accounts allows one to absorb the nearly 10 hours of material than a more emotionally demanding approach would have permitted. Across its running time, the movie works on (at least) two levels, the out-sized and the intimate, the overlapping, contrasting approaches strengthening the overall structure of the piece and permitting this work to be palatable in ways that may completely surprise the skeptical. It's still harrowing at times, with some details shocking in their violence and horror, but Lanzmann has succeeded in creating a film that permits one to ponder the unthinkable.
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Product Details

  • Release Date: 6/25/2013
  • UPC: 715515105415
  • Original Release: 1985
  • Source: Criterion
  • Region Code: A
  • Aspect Ratio: Academy Aperture (1.37:1)
  • Presentation: Color / Black & White
  • Language: Français, Italiano, English, Deutsche
  • Time: 9:26:00
  • Format: Blu-ray
  • Sales rank: 4

Cast & Crew

Technical Credits
Claude Lanzmann Director
Bernard Aubouy Sound/Sound Designer
Dominique Chapuis Cinematographer
Jimmy Glasberg Cinematographer
William Lubtchansky Cinematographer
Ziva Postec Editor
Anna Ruiz Editor
Michel Vionnet Sound/Sound Designer
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5
( 2 )
Rating Distribution

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Fri Jul 27 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    Truely the greatest rendition of the Holocaust. A must for all i

    Truely the greatest rendition of the Holocaust. A must for all in the free world to see. Worth every minute and every penny spent on this documentary.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2010

    Not The Expected

    This movie is not at all what you expect to see in a documentary about the holocaust. It makes you understand and question where personal responsibility and moral responsibility for other people begins and to what lengths it should extend. It made me rethink what I considered I ''owed'' morally to other people and to myself. I think everyone should see this. The only negative about this movie is that the snow sometimes makes it impossible to see the subtitles...

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