Review of Shoah (1985) by Tim R — 23 Apr 2008

This is, without doubt, one of the most extraordinarily moving and profound films I have ever seen. I'm actually sad it's over--it's 9 and a half hours long, and I've lived with it for the better part of a month, watching it in small doses, marveling at it's ever unfolding complexity and its ever deepening insight into man's inhumanity to man.

Why on earth, then, would one want to watch a film that so beautifully and forcefully brings into one's present reality, the horror of the destruction of the European Jews. Because this is a living testament to a systematic, bureaucratically driven death-machine that annihilated 6 million people, which, like a slow boil, crept up upon, and was thus tacitly and apathetically accepted and run by what was, for all intents and purposes, a modern, industrialized, western society. In other words, with current de-humanizing societal pressures; in a world that tries to reduce the expression of our individuality to that of mere "consumer," we would do well to heed such important documents as Shoah, lest we allow the twisted dysfunction of Nazi Germany, or the current situation in Darfur, for that matter, happen beneath our very noses while we're busy watching the latest "reality" TV show.

Lanzmann deserves the reputation that has followed him since he released this documentary in the mid-80s. The stature of this film has justifiable increased over the years. Within the first 45 minutes or so, the basic premise has been laid out: using individual accounts, juxtaposed with "present day" footage of the sites talked about (the movie was shot in the mid to late 1970s), Lanzmann quietly, yet remarkable makes horribly real the events told, unlike anything Ken Burns has been remotely able to do. The mechanism by which the holocaust developed is presented in all it's sloppy efficiency, and the film proceeds to delve deeper and deeper into its causes, its function, and its consequences for Europe, Israel and the United States. At times it is scaldingly moving -- in particular Abraham Bomba, a barber at the Treblinka gas chamber, the testimony of Rudolph Vrba, Raul Hilberg's account of the last days of the Warsaw ghetto; and the jaw-dropping bluntness and maddening denial of implicated SS men (where Lanzmann, incidentally, risked his life to get clandestinely filmed footage).

I could really go on and on about this brilliant masterpiece. I can only hope that everyone sees this film at some point in their lives, if only to be reminded how quickly human rights and human dignity and ultimately human life can get swept by away by the forces of ideology, societal ignorance, bigotry, hatred and indifference.