Die Grauzone

I was a little wary of this film because of the cast - but David Arquette was surprisingly good. I happen to like films that have a theatrical uality - so that was fine with me. At first I wondered why Harvey spoke with an accent, and no one else did - then midway through the film I got that the idea was that the Jews HEARD his German accent - and since the story was from THEIR perspective, they had no accents from their point of view. To convey this to an American audience, they spoke like Americans. I despise Shindler's List . That film turned a horror into a feel good event. Disgusting. THIS movie doesn't manipulate you with sappy speeches and ridiculous violin crescendos, nor does it get sweet and sentimental like Saving Private Ryan. This movie is about horror - and it ends horribly. It doesn't cheapen the death, it forces you to feel all of the terrible weight.

This is truly one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen. If the goal of a great movie is to make its viewer changed forever, "The Grey Zone" certainly has succeeded. Yes it is not "Schindlers List". It has no uplifting theme, other than that in the face of no hope, doomed individuals tried desperately, if for nothing else, to save one life among millions of doomed. In the end even that effort is futile.

It's images are haunting.

Do to its depressing topic and even more disturbing ending others have criticized this movie as not being "entertaining". In fact it is entertaining. It is a horror movie of the real kind. The horror of human evil based on prejudice and hatred.

Everyone needs to see this movie, with the exception of those who lived through it, as they already know!

I've seen this film twice. The first time it was such a shocking,

horrifying spectacle I vowed to never see it again. It is absolutely

among the most graphic, violent films ever made, save slasher/horror films. I saw it again to see what was buried

underneath the gore. It was surprising. As a historical document

alone The Grey Zone is unique and impressive. Countless small

details contribute to its originality: the blue-green color of the

Zyklon B crystals, the sprinklers constantly working the lawn

beside the crematoria, the clear, pretty daylight when the trains

arrive, the intimate building-to-building geography of Birkenau --

only the film Shoah manages to make these small historical

details count so much. What's left to be said about the Holocaust?

These things. Small things. Details. The grass, the sound ovens

make, sunlight hitting brick. Shoes. Luggage.

The Grey Zone is so unique that it has been misinterpreted. There

is virtually no music, nothing to tell you how to feel. It is exactly the

opposite of melodrama. The mundane repetition of the killings

actually numbs you after awhile, and this is intentional since this is

how the main characters are affected. There is no uplifting

message, and no cliched Zionist coda like Schindler's List

suggesting that all the suffering had a destination and a design.

There are some awkward elements in the film. But these are

minor next to the clarity of purpose and originality. The Grey Zone

should not become marginalized in the canon of Holocaust art

because it refuses to be sentimental. Hopefully it will be

referenced and reviewed for a long time.

I love WWII movies and am a fan of many that were made about the Holocaust. I saw this one a few nights ago it is playing right now only very limited release.

Good cast with Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, Steve Buscemi and an impressive performance for a change by David Arquette. Arquette chose a very serious role-a Jewish prisoner at a Nazi concentration camp and played it off well.

This is based on a true story about a group of Jewish concentration camp inmates at Auschwitz that plan on smuggling in dynamite to blow up one of the crematoriums. Their plan gets discovered by the SS and killings and torture run rampant to try and get them to confess and give details of their plans.

A teenage girl happens to survive one of the gassings and the camp inmates become obsessed with saving her, even though it could be at the expense of many lives.

There were some people that saw this movie because they couldn't get in to see "Frida". Some people had no idea what this movie was about before they saw it. Some people asked me before it started and I told them and they still chose to stay. If you are a history buff and like Holocaust movies and want to see a true story told through the eyes of the writers, you might like this movie but be prepared to see endless killings working around a decent script that could have been better written. However if you can appreciate the fact that the makers are trying to educate people on the Holocaust and bring to light just how cruel and horrible Hitler's Third Reich was, the movie is sad, depressing, but does have some educational value. Not every single Jew willingly accepted what was going to happen to them, a few tried to rebel and that's why this story was told.

Not very easy on the eyes, bring the Kleenex and watch with shock as one of history's most horrible atrocities is brought to the screen.

7/10.

This might not sound like a recommendation, but when you consider the film's subject matter, "painful" is actually a good word to describe THE GREY ZONE's brilliance. Director Tim Blake Nelson has crafted a fascinating portrayal of the Sonderkomando, Jewish concentration-camp prisoners who help the Nazis in order to ensure for themselves a few extra months of life, as well as creature comforts denied to the other prisoners. The script and cast are equally effective. David Arquette proves himself to be not merely the idiot bastard son of the Arquette family with a powerful performance; Harvey Kietel and Steve Buscemi are brilliant as always. The film's real strength, making it the greatest Holocaust film I've ever seen, is its relevance; we may think ourselves to noble to sell out our brethren to save our own lives, but we would certainly reconsider if actually faced with this choice. In the end, Nelson brilliantly implies that perhaps the nightmare world of the Sonderkomando is really not so different from our own workaday reality.