Review of The Flat (2011) by Robert S — 16 Aug 2013

THE FLAT.

I watched this acclaimed documentary on Netflix last night. It's the story of an elderly German-Jewish woman named Gerda Goldfinger who died at 98 in a Tel Aviv apartment three years ago whose grandson Arnon is an Israeli film director. He decided to film, just for fun, the closing of her flat and the disposition of her belongings amongst the family members. But amongst the useless (to anyone but Gerda) memorabilia was a stack of Nazi propaganda newspapers that was a complete surprise to everyone in the family. That led Arnon and his mother Hannah on an amateur detective journey into her mother's and his grandmother's past life that yielded some shocking truths. Including that her father Kurt Tuchler (Gerda's first husband) was a close friend -even after the war - of Leopold von Mildnstein, who was Adolph Eichmann's first superior in the Nazi party.

It's an absorbing story, shot in real time so the audience discovers the new truths at the very same time that Arnon and Hannah do. It also shows the two gradually piercing the veil of denial amongst the friends and relatives of Gerda they encounter on their journey who lived through - and survived - the dark times of National Socialism. Even Hannah was unwilling to go too far beyond the veil. Which explains why her son Arnon, the director of the enterprise, wasn't either. Hopefully, some other director, with the right amount of emotional distance from the story, can turn it into a drama someday, without Hollywood-izing it.