marievevir

Absolutely one of the most powerful, disturbing and brutally honest movies on the holocaust ever made, this is far superior to such glossed over Hollywood portrayals as ceaselessly produced by Steven Spielberg and his group. Though those films certainly have their moments of merit, The Grey Zone is the absolute last word on Holocaust movies, a picture that so endlessly dives into the terror and banality of death that eventually absorbed the prisonners. VERY DISTURBING, and beautifully made, this film is too grim to have the Hollywood machine to support it, but it NEEDS to be heralded so it will live on. It is definitely up there with THE NIGHT PORTER and IN A GLASS CAGE as one of the most disturbing movies on the holocaust.

Also it is quite clever in the manner that it gets away with everyone speaking English, an obvious commercial constraint. Interesting that a company like Nu Image, which usually backs First Degree Monster On The Loose movies and No Brainer action films (with the exception of the surprisingly enjoyable Undisputed), would produce this.

A film to be cherished, though with a thoughtful warning...

It is EXCEPTIONALLY disturbing.

I am a big fan of Andrei Tarkovsky, and I must say I was absolutely NOT disappointed by the re-make. It is an excellent example of how Science Fiction CAN be intelligent, and while not completely a re-make of the Tarkovsky film to the frame, and different from the book, it absolutely retains the spirit of these works, while adding a few of its own twists.

I know that this film hasn't exactly set the box office on fire and many of the multiplex crowd are running from the exits clutching their heads in pain, but I have one question to North America... Are we really THAT stupid? Come on, this film merely gives us a beautifully ambiguous dream experience that is not all that dense beyond the fact that it is based on emotion rather than logic. I mean come on, must every movie be so logical that there is NO room left for an audience to use their imaginations, and have FUN with ambiguity? MULHOLLAND DRIVE was an excellent example of how recent movies can not give you all the answers and work. But that film was embraced, and this one, because it was done by a guy like Soderburgh and features Clooney seems ripe for the picking because it will attract audiences that are only there to see a movie star's ass.

Very silly for the marketing departments at Fox, who obviously had no clue what to do with such a beautiful and poetic film, that they handled the film completely wrong. This film should have opened slow and small then grown with word of mouth, not thrown out with 2,400 prints on a Wednesday! I know it is an expensive movie, but now they have killed any momentum it might have had, at least in North America. Hopefully for its international release, a more thoughful campaign and strategy will be used.

Overall, I couldn't be more impressed and pleased with this film, from the superlative directing, acting, cinematography, music and production design, this one works full force.

And the irony is that it's not even HALF as dense as the classic film Tarkovsky made of the book years ago. So if a simplified version of such a story is getting so many audience members screaming in confusion and boredom, how are even more marginal films going to survive? It's getting more and more difficult to see interesting, intelligent genre films that don't feature kung-fu fights and machine gun battles between their new ideas.

Guess it will continue to get tougher. I am at least one person who will continue to support and love intelligent and progessive genre cinema.

Hope there's more like me.

I saw this at the FCMM festival in Montreal, and I was really impressed by the poetic atmosphere and beautiful story. The photography, music and sets were amazing, and it seemed like a strange fairy tale the way the voice over told the history of what was happening. Overall I think this is one of the most impressive short films I saw coming from Quebec, and I would recommend it to any fans of artistic films, or strange fantasy movies. Perhaps horror movie fans won't like this, so despite the dark story, it is more of a romance or film for fans of Tarkovsky or David Lynch's films than typical horror movies.

I can't wait to see what these director's do next. This is one of the best short films I have seen.