Review of The Wall (1962) by Davey M — 20 Oct 2011

Seeing "The Wall" reminded me a bit of visiting the Smithsonian Holocaust Museum for the first time in middle school--I'd heard about the horrors of the Berlin Wall and the Holocaust, but actually seeing them suddenly made everything seem much more real.

Looking at the huge pile of shoes at the Holocaust Museum and realizing that each of those belonged to a human being was a really significant moment in my life--the emphasis on the individuals in the footage of "The Wall" had a similar effect.

Those were real people, these were real things that happened to them, and they could just as easily have happened to me if I'd been born at a different place and time. Seeing the footage of "The Wall," with the attempted (sometimes successful, other times not) escapes, the boarded-up windows overlooking the wall, the guards with their guns, and the friends and family members looking longingly across this seemingly insurmountable barrier--all this was new to me, and incredibly sobering.

I'd heard how miserable things were in East Germany, but to see actual people risking their lives to leave was harrowing. The music and narration were unusually nuanced and even poetic (I was reminded a bit of Alain Resnais' "Night and Fog"), and helped to contextualize and underscore the powerful images without distracting from them--it was really just a beautifully crafted and deeply felt piece of filmmaking, and it does exactly what it sets out to do: it communicates a terrible, tragic situation.

I think the immediacy of the moving image is one of the great powers of film generally, and of documentary specifically. As far as history lessons go, this has probably been the most striking one I've had all semester.