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After having watched this movie in parts over a total of nine days, I am completely hyped to post the first MoFo review of this extremely important documentary.
I've known about this movie for a long time, but it can be difficult actually bringing yourself to watch a nine-and-a-half hour film. Thankfully, the war movie countdown was just the push I needed. I spent an hour a day watching this while still making room for at least one war movie a day (although I typically kept to shorter ones for those nine days). Considering its legacy, I was hoping it would end up in the same boat that the seven-hour Satantango ended up for me: complete perfection and a position on my top 100.
Despite the movie's length, I'll make this review quick.
Claude Lanzmann's giant of a movie is nine-and-a-half hours of interviews with Holocaust survivors, culled from 350 hours of footage! This footage takes us to the various locations of where the horrors of the Holocaust took place. Many of these places were either abandoned or flat out erased, as some of these places will simply be open fields of grass. We hear these elders tell their stories like we were children on their laps, just ready to realize the true nature of the world, and it can often be difficult for the interviewee to go back to these memories, more so than it is for us to hear these stories.
The first thing you should keep in mind is that this movie IS very monotonous. It's best if you watch this movie in one-hour increments instead of two hours, because the movie doesn't pull any new tricks or try to change its format. So for an hour at a time, I was on one person or another's lap hearing old stories of Holocaust torture, war strategies, ghetto life, etc. We also have a lot of slow scenes of riding trains or through city streets for some sort of visual aspect, but it gets old after a while, even in daily one-hour increments. On top of the fact that many of these heart-wrenching stories can be gruesome, it's best to treat this insightful megamovie as a miniseries. Which brings me to my final criticism: this movie was culled from 350 hours of footage. It would've done better as a show.
But the real reason for the movie's existence is purely justified. I mean, out of 350 hours, think of how many stories didn't make the final cut of this movie? That's a lot of stories the world needs to hear. This movie is already chock-full of stories with a historical relevancy that matches its emotional core. And we don't just interview the Jews, but some people who were related to the experiences. Even near the end, one ex-Nazi is trying to make his old position in the whole shebang seem less vital than it was by claiming it was a small part. My mind immediately went to a quote from Orson Welles' film The Stranger, in which Welles plays a Nazi hiding under an assumed name: "I was only following orders," to which a detective replied, "You gave the orders."
The descriptions of the interviewees can oftentimes be so detailed and visual, which means we can see these horrors happening as we travel these old and barren sites of the Holocaust, almost as if the spirits of the dead are reenacting these horrors in our own heads. In the end, the horrors are almost as real for us as it was for the Jews being interviewed, even though we can't even begin to share the full extent of their pain. I won't tell you any of their stories, though, for two reasons: A: spoilers, B: I couldn't possibly tell these stories as well as them, even if I mastered the art of copying memories or some psychofantasy bull like that.
Shoah is not perfect filmmaking, and I understand when there are those who say the movie is boring. Nevertheless, this is a movie that needs to be seen, at least for anyone interested in the history. Thanks to Claude Lanzmann, these Holocaust survivors' stories will be told long after their deaths, and I feel like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders not for watching a nine-and-a-half hour movie, but for taking the responsibility to hear their stories. It's a very odd feeling, but one that I'm happy with as a human being and a critic. Well worth the nine days I spent watching it.
And now onto the sequel: Shoah, Four Sisters.
= 87/100
Claude Lanzmann needs 2 more movies for an average score.
Shoah
(1985) - Directed by Claude Lanzmann
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War Documentary
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"So then they began to wonder, 'Where have they put those Jews?'"
(1985) - Directed by Claude Lanzmann
--------------------------------------------
War Documentary
-------------------------------------------------
"So then they began to wonder, 'Where have they put those Jews?'"
I've known about this movie for a long time, but it can be difficult actually bringing yourself to watch a nine-and-a-half hour film. Thankfully, the war movie countdown was just the push I needed. I spent an hour a day watching this while still making room for at least one war movie a day (although I typically kept to shorter ones for those nine days). Considering its legacy, I was hoping it would end up in the same boat that the seven-hour Satantango ended up for me: complete perfection and a position on my top 100.
Despite the movie's length, I'll make this review quick.
Claude Lanzmann's giant of a movie is nine-and-a-half hours of interviews with Holocaust survivors, culled from 350 hours of footage! This footage takes us to the various locations of where the horrors of the Holocaust took place. Many of these places were either abandoned or flat out erased, as some of these places will simply be open fields of grass. We hear these elders tell their stories like we were children on their laps, just ready to realize the true nature of the world, and it can often be difficult for the interviewee to go back to these memories, more so than it is for us to hear these stories.
The first thing you should keep in mind is that this movie IS very monotonous. It's best if you watch this movie in one-hour increments instead of two hours, because the movie doesn't pull any new tricks or try to change its format. So for an hour at a time, I was on one person or another's lap hearing old stories of Holocaust torture, war strategies, ghetto life, etc. We also have a lot of slow scenes of riding trains or through city streets for some sort of visual aspect, but it gets old after a while, even in daily one-hour increments. On top of the fact that many of these heart-wrenching stories can be gruesome, it's best to treat this insightful megamovie as a miniseries. Which brings me to my final criticism: this movie was culled from 350 hours of footage. It would've done better as a show.
But the real reason for the movie's existence is purely justified. I mean, out of 350 hours, think of how many stories didn't make the final cut of this movie? That's a lot of stories the world needs to hear. This movie is already chock-full of stories with a historical relevancy that matches its emotional core. And we don't just interview the Jews, but some people who were related to the experiences. Even near the end, one ex-Nazi is trying to make his old position in the whole shebang seem less vital than it was by claiming it was a small part. My mind immediately went to a quote from Orson Welles' film The Stranger, in which Welles plays a Nazi hiding under an assumed name: "I was only following orders," to which a detective replied, "You gave the orders."
The descriptions of the interviewees can oftentimes be so detailed and visual, which means we can see these horrors happening as we travel these old and barren sites of the Holocaust, almost as if the spirits of the dead are reenacting these horrors in our own heads. In the end, the horrors are almost as real for us as it was for the Jews being interviewed, even though we can't even begin to share the full extent of their pain. I won't tell you any of their stories, though, for two reasons: A: spoilers, B: I couldn't possibly tell these stories as well as them, even if I mastered the art of copying memories or some psychofantasy bull like that.
Shoah is not perfect filmmaking, and I understand when there are those who say the movie is boring. Nevertheless, this is a movie that needs to be seen, at least for anyone interested in the history. Thanks to Claude Lanzmann, these Holocaust survivors' stories will be told long after their deaths, and I feel like a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders not for watching a nine-and-a-half hour movie, but for taking the responsibility to hear their stories. It's a very odd feeling, but one that I'm happy with as a human being and a critic. Well worth the nine days I spent watching it.
And now onto the sequel: Shoah, Four Sisters.
= 87/100
Claude Lanzmann needs 2 more movies for an average score.