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Dagmar Schwarz

Film review: 'Art of Remembrance'
The life and times of Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor and determined seeker of justice, are compellingly presented in Johanna Heer and Werner Schmiedel's feature documentary, showing in morning screenings this weekend at Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

"The Art of Remembrance: Simon Wiesenthal" is successful overall in following the career of this much-revered subject and in arguing for public education about the Holocaust as a necessity in the ominous climate of rising neo-Nazism and intolerance in Europe and elsewhere.

Filmed in the early 1990s at several locations including America and his native Austria, Wiesenthal tells many stories of horrible experiences in concentration camps and the "mosaic" hunts for Nazi war criminals in the decades following the war.

The film is briskly paced and covers a lot of ground. There are several narrators, plenty of archival footage and numerous interviews, including one with Richard Seibel, the American colonel who led the liberation of Mauthausen, a death camp where Wiesenthal barely managed to survive while his mother did not.

A "collector of information," Wiesenthal worked with the United States and countless collaborators in tracking down such criminals as Adolf Eichmann and Karl Silberbauer, the Nazi who arrested diarist Anne Frank and her family.

Wiesenthal is a prolific author and passionately explains his love of books ("sometimes more than people"), which he calls the Jewish people's "monuments." The film effectively includes a brief tour of Los Angeles' Museum of Tolerance and many events and awards ceremonies, such as the Vienna premiere of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List".

But even such a respected figure is nonplussed by the reluctance of Austria's government to convict Nazi criminals in the past two decades, while the basic problem of racism persists in many forms all over the world.

Those who ignore the murderers of the past pave the way for the murderers of the future. In Heer and Schmiedel's fine film, Wiesenthal takes on politicians and other targets but is clearly not seeking revenge. Still, his motivation has been "you can only forgive someone for what has happened to yourself, not to others."

THE ART OF REMEMBRANCE:

SIMON WIESENTHAL

River Lights Pictures

Producers-directors-writers Johanna Heer, Werner Schmiedel

Cinematographer Johanna Heer

Music John Zorn

Narrators Dagmar Schwarz, Georg Schuchter,

Florentin Groll

With Simon Wiesenthal, Richard R. Seibel,

Raul Hilberg, Sylvie Corrin-Zyss

Color/black and white

Running time -- 99 minutes

No MPAA rating...
  • 1/24/1997
  • The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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