(1985)
5
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.
Trailer
releases for Shoah on AllMovie
Shoah (1985)
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Title/Studio |
Release Date |
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Shoah (Masters of Cinema) [4 Discs]
Eureka
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January 22, 2007 |
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Shoah [4 Discs]
New Yorker Video
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October 7, 2003 |
