735. SHOAH (1985)

Running Time: 566 minutes
Directed By: Claude Lanzmann
Click here to view the trailer

NOTE: Roger Ebert passed away today at the age of seventy. I wanted to take just a minute to acknowledge this and say a few words. Anyone who has ever wanted to write about movies, be it for personal pleasure or for monetary gain, has to recognize Roger Ebert as an inspiration. I'm obviously an amateur movie critic/reviewer and though I didn't regularly read Ebert's reviews, he often came to mind as I sat down to write about movies. Roger got to do what all of us movie fans dream about and that's watch movies for a living. His opinion was respected and admit it, before you went out to take in a Friday night movie, you'd peruse the newspaper and at least look at the star rating to see what Ebert thought about the movie you planned to go see. Rest in peace Mr. Ebert.

LET US NEVER FORGET

Perhaps the most depressing review ever written? Could be. Not only do we have the news of Roger Ebert's death fresh in our memories, but I also have to tackle the gloomiest subject in history: the holocaust. I spent a total of six nights watching "Shoah" - a nine plus hour documentary, shot over the course of six years and edited over the course of five.

It's a documentary, as I just mentioned, so detailing a plot synopsis is a little trickier than other times. Claude Lanzmann is the director and the interviewer, as he travels to fourteen different countries and talks to the survivors, perpetrators and onlookers of the holocaust - "the final solution" that saw the extermination of over six million Jews (actually, the New York Times did a story recently citing that the number may be closer to twenty million), with very few survivors. You can't write the kind of passion, drama and emotion that Lanzmann is able to capture with his camera, as (some) interviewees breakdown on camera, unable to bear the thought of the living hell that they once witnessed, so many years prior. As THE BOOK notes, Lanzmann focuses mainly on the atrocities - the murders, the brutal way in which Jews were destroyed and the even more brutal way in which the remains were disposed of - and less on everything else. Lanzmann visits the concentration camps, as they look today and with the help of a translator, speaks many different tongues in order to compile this nine hour history lesson.

Is "Shoah" too long? I'd say that, perhaps, yes it is. And, you must understand, I really hate to say that, because on the other hand, I think the extreme length is also a credit to the film and Lanzmann's determination. Realize that Lanzmann shot over 350 hours of footage and so, in the grand scheme of things, nine hours is actually just a sliver of what he had captured. However, I do have to say that watching this one on the computer (thanks Netflix), for the first time, may have actually taken away from my experience - just a little. Sitting in a slightly uncomfortable computer chair for a grand total of nine hours, wasn't the most pleasurable thing in the world. In the end, there were certainly times where I could've listened for nine more hours and other times where I just wanted to be done with it. I'm highly, highly interested in the holocaust, however, there were times when it felt like we were hearing the same stories over and over.

"Bodies came tumbling out of the gas chamber like rocks falling from a pickup truck."

"They were told they were just being disinfected, not realizing that they were being led to their death."

"The stench of dead bodies was unbearable."

There's only so many times you can hear those sorts of things before you start to become a little numb to it all. After hearing it over and over, repeated, it doesn't really have the same impact as it had the first time you heard it or even the second time. Also, when dealing with holocaust issues, I find it really hard to wrap my head around these stories. It's not that I don't believe them, please don't misunderstand me. It's almost like I can't get my mind to realize that these aren't just stories and that these awful testimonials, from these poor people, were real events. Bodies really were burned (some burned alive), people really were killed in groups of over a thousand and the Nazis REALLY tried to exterminate the entire Jewish population, at least within Europe. It's hard to fathom all that, at least for me it is.

Perhaps Lanzmann understood a mindset like mine; understood that there's a difference in hearing the stories and living the stories. Perhaps that's why we heard things over and over, with such raw emotion and passion. Perhaps that was Lanzmann's way of beating it into our heads, assuring that we'd never forget the atrocities that were carried out by the Nazis. Perhaps that's why we were forced to look upon a poor barber (Abraham Bomba), with tears in his eyes as he recalled cutting the hair of Jews that were friends of his and knowing that they were about to breathe their last breath. Perhaps that's why we were forced to look upon the face of Simon Srebnik, as "friends" of his gave their theories on why the Jews were forced to suffer the hell that they did: Because they killed Christ. Perhaps that's why we were forced to hear stories from Jan Karski, an emotional wreck onscreen, as he recalled visiting the Warsaw Ghetto and noting that it was "no longer a world, it wasn't humanity". Perhaps. Did it work with me? Well...no. Like I said, it's just really hard to fathom all of this. Maybe someday I'll be able to watch "Shoah" and cry, but this time around, I was only able to watch with a heavy heart, as I tried to put myself in these people's shoes and found it impossible. Would I ever sit through "Shoah" again? Well, I don't know. It was certainly, technically good and wouldn't argue with someone who took the defense that everyone should see this movie. However, I don't think it really works well as a personal favorite choice and that's the argument I'm going to have to tackle come TOP 20 time.

RATING: 8/10  Technically it's an '8', but I wouldn't call it a favorite or anything...at least not yet. I need to think about a few questions as I draw closer to the TOP 20: Would I want to sit through "Shoah" again and did it impact me enough to really stick with me, like I assume it was intended to do? We'll see...

MOVIES WATCHED: 650
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 351

April 4, 2013  11:16pm