Amazon.com video review:
To write a review of a film such as Shoah seems an impossible task: how to sum up one of the most powerful discourses on film in such a way as to
make people realize that this is a documentary of immense consequence, a
documentary that is not easy to watch but important to watch, a documentary
that not only records the facts, but bears witness. We are commanded "Never
forget"; this film helps us to fulfill that mandate, reverberating with the
viewer long after the movie has ended. Yes, Holocaust films are plentiful,
both fictional and non-, with titles such as The Last Days,
Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful entering the
mainstream. But this is not a film about the Holocaust per se; this is a
film about people. It's a meandering, nine-and-a-half-hour film that
never shows graphic pictures or delves into the political aspects of what
happened in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, but talks with survivors, with SS
men, with those who witnessed the extermination of 6 million Jews.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years tracking people down, cajoling them
to talk, asking them questions they didn't want to face. When soldiers
refuse to appear on film, Lanzmann sneaks cameras in. When people are on
the verge of breaking down and can't answer any more questions, Lanzmann
asks anyway. He gives names to the victims--driving through a town that was
predominantly Jewish before Hitler's time, a local points out which Jews
owned what. Lanzmann travels the world, speaking to workers in Poland,
survivors in Israel, officers in Germany. He is not a detached interviewer;
his probings are deeply personal. One man farmed the land upon which
Treblinka was built. "Didn't the screams bother you?" Lanzmann asks. When
the farmer seems to brush the issues aside with a smile, Lanzmann's fury is
noticeable. "Didn't all this bother you?" he demands angrily, only to be
told, "When my neighbor cuts his thumb, I don't feel hurt." The responses,
the details are difficult to hear, but critical nonetheless. Shoah
tells the story of the most horrifying event of the 20th century, not
chronologically and not with historical detail, but in an even more
important way: person by person. --Jenny Brown
