Shoah

This documentary tells the story of the Holocaust from a particularly human and "everyman" viewpoint. Claude Lanzmann realized that the victims of this horror were gradually dying off and took the initiative to search out the innocents who had these hidious tattoos on their arms and just talk to them. Not all wanted to be a part of the picture, but Lanzmann had a very unique ability to coax and sometimes browbeat the experiences out of these ordinary people who were subjected to unspeakable horrors. This is a long and extremely painful film to watch. Make no mistake. At the end is a better understanding of man's capacity for cruelty to his fellow man. I believe that is what Lanzmann wanted to pass down to the coming generations.

Incredible documentary with first-person testimonies, slowly and calmly, to listen, meditate and observe the worst of human nature, the wolf that justifies itself, the guilt that evades, the hidden, justified hatred and resentment, the evasion in the looks, the slow and stammering responses, the laughter of certain witnesses, the human being can really be a demon, and then continue living as if nothing had happened. Education in hatred of the neighbor, of the brother, we see where it can go, and here, unfortunately, history repeats itself, we continue to incite hatred for mere economic interests, disguised as culture, nationalities, races and religions...

One reason why I'm drawn into cinema is that at its best it brings together all of art, transcends the boundaries, and without which I would be somehow clueless, somewhat not completely myself. Almost always I describe these films as important, subjectively speaking, and most of the time the mark they imprint upon me is a thirst for more, all this in the most positive sense one may imagine.

And then there's "Shoah" (1985). It's unbearably long, gruesomely shocking and depressing, and with certainty a film I don't wish to see again and see as a kind of anti-film. Yet that's precisely why it's remarkable, and why it is important. It's transcendental in a way that I've rarely witnessed: it disregards time and its own format, and simply exists. It doesn't care that it stops and meditates. To "linger" is a wrong choice of words, since it means staying in one place "longer than necessary, typically because of a reluctance to leave". The point is not to linger, but to endure. The point of the film is to exist as it is, as a witness. Thus one of its weaknesses, if one uses such comparative and charged term, becomes its essential characteristic: the film is all about not being a film, it's not about finding a quick way around a point to another. It's a record of pain, and it's not meant to be an easy-going experience.

"Shoah", then, is like a film that refuses to be a film. It was Ebert who called it "an act of witness". I agree. It is a witness to people reminiscing about something so horrible of which it's quite impossible to reminisce at all. But they do it, and their pain has been transferred to Lanzmann's poem. This poem doesn't try to make the incomprehensible comprehensible, but rather make that, which is incomprehensible to them, the survivors, equally incomprehensible to us. As such, "Shoah" is a monument, a collection of recollections that wrenches at the heart.

I suppose my reaction was the most natural there is after being exposed to what the Holocaust was: emptiness that is like a fleeing dream trying to catch its tail, unsuccessfully groping at the ever-distant memory. The feeling is that there was no way out, and there still isn't. That we can learn from the horrors of the past, but really don't. And at what cost? The survivors' testimonies, of their own survival and of the lives of those who didn't, is, in the end, the story that deserves to be told, again and again.

I saw "For All Mankind" (1989) shortly after this. I'd say these two films form a very perceptive cross-section of what we humans are like. The awe I felt during "Mankind" only intensified the opposite kind of awe, of dread, I felt during "Shoah": can this be the same humankind that is capable of both kinds of deeds, and almost contemporarily? No matter how far into space we launch ourselves, we carry within us both the darkness and the light, the hopelessness and hope. In the words of W. B. Yeats, "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

It's nine and a half hours of travelogue footage and interviews with terribly ordinary middle-aged and senior citizens about events that happened a half-century ago.

Except that the sites visited are the scenes of the systematic mass murder of roughly 11 million men, women and children, including some 6 million Jews, and the ordinary grandparents are the survivors and perpetrators of some of the most horrendous atrocities that mankind has committed upon each other.

It is a terribly draining movie, hypnotic and disorienting, both in it's length and in the blandness, the matter-of-fact descriptions of things that would make a normal person scream in horror. And that is what is so amazingly important and meaningful about this film; that these were ordinary, average people. These were, and are, normal folks like you and me, and anybody, regardless of background, moral upbringing, and standards of decency can be caught up in circumstances beyond their power or experience, and can do the most depraved or heroic things imaginable. It is shocking, insightful, and a very,very important film that forces us to confront our own humanity and decide what that, in fact means.

But it's nine and a half hours long. Be prepared to be drained and leave with your head buzzing.

With commenting this film we are going out of the movie industry to get into history and the world that it shaped. This rating concerns the importance of the theme of the movie and the effort and the enormous importance of the established work.

The film draws us into the deepest, dark and dirty human intentions that led to and are even devoid of any humane sense. It is shown the downfall of modern humanity, which mimics the barbaric world of the past. The long centuries of experience appear to be insufficient to call for peace and universal existence. On the contrary, it seems that the negative trends will not disappear very soon.

Although it is not shown any atrocity, the stories of witnesses of the war are enough to push our imagination to unthinkable mental pictures. It remains impossible to think and honestly to sympathize to storytellers due to lack of language in which we could understand what they experienced. We can only be able to pity them when they do not find the strength to continue their stories and to bow to their power to tell everyone about the downfall of much part of mankind.

Extremely long and difficult story that requires serious approach and interest in the topic. Valuable result.

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