Shoah

To me "Shoah" represents an inversion of the other canonically revered Holocaust documentary, Resnais's ''Night and Fog". Resnais's short film has always made me a tad uncomfortable. Of course watching it, with its excerpts from films made by the Nazis documenting their own murders, is a powerful, even unforgettable experience. Yet, I always thought that Resnais was in a way blackmailing his audience into being "moved" by his film.  In showing images of the murders, he is not only displaying the victims in ways the victims cannot give their consent towards, he is also trying to make the audience say they have "seen" and understood the horror. This, it seems to me, is Resnais attempting to put his audience (and himself) in a position of "safe understanding" of the holocaust, like "been there, seen that".  The very sense of horror provoked by the film nonetheless protects the viewer from any sense of incomprehension. It provides an easily defined experience of revulsion.

Shoah, shot entirely in the "present" of people who lived through the Holocaust as prisoners, Nazis, or witnesses, operates on a more poetic level.  In a way it is not even a documentary on the Holocaust itself but a documentary about coping with the memory of disaster in the present.  The disaster cannot be shown, and it cannot really be described.  The stories one hears in the film are very moving, but part of what is so powerful about them is the way the speakers struggle to articulate their experience or convey their emotions.  At times, Lanzmann's interviews even seem a bit sadistic, like he is forcing the speakers to reveal their pain, but I think part of what is great about Shoah is that it has no pretension to being a "healing'' work.  Rather, in pointing to how any attempt to understand history, and particularly its disasters, can only be partially successful, partially remembered, Lanzmann does not shield himself, or the viewers of the film from the sense that the helplessness of the Other always strips the self of its own sense of empowerment, its ability to speak to or help or understand the Other.

On a historical level, the most interesting point for me was how much time and effort the Nazis devoted to the cover up of their crimes. I always had an image in my mind of the Nazi elite, and indeed many of the true-believing populace, being so ideologically fanatical that they didn't care who found out about the death camps because they truly believed they were doing good by "purifying" humanity. But everything here indicates that the regime's greatest fear was that anyone would find concrete evidence of the genocide. What at times almost operates as a kind of sick black comedy, however, is how much effort went into concealing the mass murders, and yet how utterly blatant it is that everyone knew what was happening to those herded to the camps.

I'm a bit amused by critics who lavish praise on the film by saying that, despite its subject matter, it is ultimately "life affirming" and "humane."  It seems to me that they have to say this if they are to laud the film, or they themselves will not seem "humane". I, for one, do not see it as, in any way whatsoever, a "warm" work. The Nazis interviewed in the film all seem like what they were- bureaucrats or yes-men who did their jobs to make their living. In Nazi Germany, mass-murder was an industry where many people made livelihoods. The most terrifying presences in the whole film are resistance fighters whose greatest joy in life was killing Nazis. One still feels an insatiable hatred towards humanity coming from them. One of the men's statement, "Lick my heart, you'd die of poison," is, for me, one of the greatest lines in all cinema, and the words I would use to summarize the experience of watching "Shoah." I must express my one and only displeasure with the film. No where in its nine and a half hours does Lanzmann interview or even mention any of the non-Jewish categories of people targeted for extermination by the Nazis. Watching this, you wouldn't even know that Roma, homosexual, and physically and mentally handicapped people were also slaughtered in the camps. These omissions fit nicely with Lanzmann's Zionist ideology, but that only underscores, I think, that this is a great work, but not a humanitarian one.

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.

I did not love every second of Shoah. I didn't even love every hour. But, I think this was intentional. While yes, I didn't quite give this a perfect score, I can completely understand why people have. It hasn't left my mind in the days since I watched it, and there is nothing else out there like it. I think the reason why we don't see many big documentaries on The Holocaust anymore is because Shoah covered so much, and is such a difficult movie to follow up. Between it and Schindler's List (which is obviously not a documentary, but deals with similar subject matter in a lengthy, gruelling, but admittedly more accessible manner), films about The Holocaust have likely peaked. Then again, I guess Son Of Saul provided a fresh and uniquely haunting depiction of The Holocaust, so maybe my point doesn't entirely stand.

WELL: when it comes to documentaries, it's difficult to imagine another one on The Holocaust being as comprehensive, gut-wrenching, and ambitious as Shoah. Plus the fact that in 1985, there were still more survivors and eyewitness accounts to draw from helped. Despite the lack of archival footage and images, this film is incredibly gruesome and horrific, as many of the stories alone provide an intense and overwhelming amount of detail. Lanzmann was a real tough interviewer throughout, and was completely unafraid to ask difficult question to all his interviewees, whether they were victims, perpetrators, or bystanders. It's uncomfortable, perhaps, but the interrogating style of interviews does get more detail, emotion, and brutal honesty than you would get from more formal interviews. Also perhaps controversial was the filming of ex-Nazis, who agreed to have their voices recorded but not their faces. Lanzmann used hidden cameras for these interviews, and usually that kind of deception would turn me off a documentary, but the argument here that they got off too easily for their crimes and therefore deserve to be exposed is a compelling and rather agreeable one.

It's hard to cover too much about this movie. The experience of watching it is really necessary, because putting something this huge into words is futile, unless you want to go on for pages and pages. But I would like to address two prominent criticisms of this film, and explain why they didn't bother me too much, while briefly going over what I didn't expect to get out of the film but did.

The first criticism is regarding how some interviews aren't translated efficiently, with Lanzmann asking a question (which is subtitled), his translator repeating the question in the interviewee's language, the interviewee answering, and then the translator putting their answer back into French (I think? The language that Lanzmann was speaking), which is then subtitled. The way some viewers complained about this, I was worried every interview was going to be translated this way, but in the end, it was maybe about a quarter? Maybe even less. And even then, it wasn't that bothersome. Tightening up the editing might take half an hour to an hour off the runtime, but the way these interviews are filmed, there would be so many jump cuts, and I think it would just feel weird.

The other criticism is the length in general. That almost nine and a half hours is too long. This is one that I understand, and yes, the length was challenging. The last two to three hours, I'll admit, I found it harder to concentrate. But, I think this was intentional, and even though it leads to a less "entertaining" film, I think it elicits a powerful and unique emotional response. By making the film so long (and occasionally repetitive), Lanzmann is effectively making us used to the horrors he covers in such explicit detail. Many of the interviewees talk about how they were nauseated and disgusted by what was happening in the concentration camps, but after a while, became desensitised and numb to it all. The man who had to remove the bodies from the gas chambers threw up the first time he had to do it, but after some time, he became used to it. The townspeople who lived near concentration camps were horrified at first- by the smells, the sights, and the knowledge of what was happening so close by- but also, eventually, got numb to it. Unless you were there, it's hard to imagine how something so horrifying could become so "normal." But watching a documentary as horrific and detailed and long as Shoah replicates that feeling. Once I realised I was no longer as horrified or saddened by the stories in the final hours as I had been in the first few hours, I finally had some semblance of an understanding why those who lived during that time became apathetic. It's a haunting and sobering thought, realising that in all likelihood, I, my friends, my family- had all of us been in the same situation, it may have been similarly easy to accept such horrors.

Therefore, Shoah, above all else, reads to me as a warning to not become desensitised. To not stop caring when terrible things happen, because not doing anything can let the genuinely evil people get away with so much more. Of course, Shoah achieves far more than just this in its gargantuan runtime, but this was my main take away. I'd highly recommend Shoah, despite its challenging nature and overall length, because if you give it time, it can likely change your outlook on life, and better you as a human being.

I've been learning about the Holocaust for at least twenty years now. I've attended at least two talks that were given by survivors. I've read memoirs and short stories and graphic novels and history books, seen fictionalized films and documentaries, and been to at least two Holocaust museums, including the one in DC.

Yet it wasn't until watching this film that it truly dawned on me: the Holocaust took place in this exact world that we're living in now. It took place in a world where people wear Hawaiian shirts, where children walk alongside their bicycles, where people pay to get haircuts. It took place in a world with railroads and travel agencies and moving vans and typewriters. It took place in a world with farmers and bureaucrats and engineers and babies. A world where people complain about their jobs, where people are too tired or selfish or stupid or scared to care about anything other than themselves. The trees looked like trees then, the rivers flowed like rivers, and the grass was green in the summertime. All of this happened, not in some otherworldly, black-and-white, unfathomable realm, but in a world where children under four can ride a train for free, where not having a flush toilet in your house could be considered appallingly primitive, and where a living person exposed to exhaust fumes will suffocate and a body exposed to flame will turn to ash.

Lanzmann's interviews are intense. His personality, albeit quite calm and always polite, is stirringly insistent--he never hesitates to call a lie a lie, even as he encounters every possible variety of mistruth. There are those who try to rewrite the past--to claim ignorance, poor memory, a lack of any actionable authority, a rosier and more melodramatic view of a tragic fate that was simply unavoidable. What could we have done, they say. We didn't know, they say. We did everything we could, they say. Even if we had risked our necks, it was fated from up above. He never lets that pass. "No. I don't think that's true," he says, and their faces falter, all shrugs and awkward smiles and apologetic platitudes, because of course it's not true.

The Holocaust unfolded because everybody kept doing what they were supposed to be doing, too overwhelmed or uncaring to choose resistance. It was an unprecedented and horrifying event, yet it unfolded in the temperament, landscape, and conditions of this very normal world. Hopefully, Lanzmann's courage will encourage viewers to speak up whenever they have an opportunity to challenge wrongness.

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."