Shoah

The closest that cinema has come to being able to genuinely respond to a theme and an event that seems to defy any possibility of adequate cinematic treatment. Also, the greatest use of cinema as a documentary instrument. This, along with SOBIBOR, A VISITOR FROM THE LIVING, THE KARSKI REPORT, THE LAST OF THE UNJUST and THE FOUR SISTERS, can really be seen as a single monumental work that proves the fundamental place that cinema can occupy in the recording and transmission of historical memory.

Shoah strongly resists commentary. What can you say of a documentary 9:30 hours long (edited down from 10 times as much raw footage all of it original); interviews with witnesses, survivors and perpetrators and contemporary shots of the locations where history's most heinous genocide took place. It may be the best docu ever made, but it's decidedly un-cinematic, never aesthetic, and takes the medium to its most crystalline translucence. No artistry or craftsmanship, just historical horror.

There's nothing I can write here that can properly explain what I felt after the 9 1/2 hours. It is insane watching these people back in ordinary life talk about images straight from hell. This is why we have movies.

The ultimate Holocaust film. Pretty goddamned exhausting, but when you think about it, you soon realize that a film like this had to be made while there were still plenty of people alive who had been there. The sheer monstrosity of the "Final Solution" may be too much for our tiny human brains to ever comprehend; a movie of this length with this thoroughness is probably as close as any motion picture will ever get to really grasping it. The lack of stock film, if anything, makes this MORE scary

I'm not sure if this can be called "Cinema", but it's a monumental experience, which will leave a mark and haunt you forever.

Hard to rank, but it's far & away the best cinematic response to the Holocaust I've seen, and additionally I think the editing & overall presentation is more sophisticated than some reviewers give it credit for.

Really strong documentary. The 9 hours are tough to get through but only because of the intensity of the subject, it flows really well and is always interesting. I found Lanzmann's interview style to be somewhat abrasive and it's really the only thing that detracted from an otherwise impressive achievement.

i gave it full marks not because it is perfect but it's ridiculous to rate it. maybe you'll just have to watch it and think on the banality of evil. and i repeat again, it's impossible to rate something what doesnt have an artistic goal and is completely nonfiction, in addition to that it is also applicable for nuit et brouillard. Just experience it and 'brood' on humanity, screw the camera angles, direction, script etc. if you say you can't, sorry to break it to you, but it's not your kind of

With it's description and a 9 hour run time, I was going into it almost as a challenge, daring it to keep me interested. Not only was I completely engrossed, but the pacing, although slow, is very solid and eventually the hours just melt away.

Indescribable.

Some things can't be discussed in only 500 characters. I was really struck by the normalcy of having such a horrifying history imprinted on the future. For example, the train tracks leading into Auschwitz has a serene quality,

"Lanzmann builds the past using tools that exist only in the present, summoning an unfathomable catastrophe with the voices and memories of survivors." - Ed Gonzalez

Doing the math, this documentary uses ~2.7-4.2% of the footage shot and the other films Lanzmann made with the footage use ~3.1-4.9% of the footage (and depending on what source you're looking at, there was 225-350+hrs of footage). These films barely scratch the surface of the interview material, but we can only manage them in film form. What a collossus.

Such a massive, incredible achievement that it's almost hard to compare to other movies. While really hard viewing in parts, it admirably never becomes a slog but instead stays contemplative, hypnotic and often simultaneously horrifying and spellbinding. Taking it on is quite a task to set oneself, but a worthwhile one.

People and places have never appeared so vividly on film. This is the power of documentary film making fully realised. Lanzmann combines highly structured interviews with a willingness to facilitate free association as he unwaveringly pursues the exact details of the Nazi's production line of death. The Nazis are absolutely condemned and the viewer is able to bear witness to the suffering of the Jews through the potency of memory. By showing death, Lanzmann necessarily shows the essence of life.

Very difficult to rate and a harrowing, gruelling experience to watch. Some of the best footage in existence, however.

Smartly eschewing archival images and stock footage in favor of harrowing, unshakeable testimonies, Lanzmann's mammoth documentary celebrates in many ways the power of imagination. No bells and whistles here, just the sober reconstruction of a past memory shared only by a remaining few, yet vividly relived through the power of our collective minds. A document for the ages.

An exhaustive attempt to come to terms with the inexplicable, this is a gargantuan undertaking focusing on how the Nazi's perverted science and reason to maximise their destructive killing capacity via technological means and the devastating consequences not just for the Jews but for humanity as a whole. Lanzmann deftly cuts between traumatic recounts of survivors and evocative landscape footage to create the definitive document of a civilization's terrifying descent into complete madness.

The first era section worked better for me; being there, talking to witnesses on the streets, how the events still linger in the landscape and the townscape, in workmen's banter and blood-libel babble really wowed.

Rightfully exhausting, and uncompromising in both subject matter and execution - no archive footage, the film feels like a reawakening of memory. Stunning cinematography contrasted with some of the most upsetting sequences of pure dialogue you'll ever hear. Lanzmann is at his best when he cajoles several Nazi officers into interviews - their testimonies are by far the most chilling in their detail and banality.

So horrible and upsetting. The stories told in Shoah are brutal and depressing -- how can they not be?

Preliminary rating based on the first 2-3 hours of part two, which, after having been put off some months ago by the first 30 mins of part one due to usage of an intermediary translator, killing a chemistry between the interviewer and interviewee apparently for me alone necessary to be fully envelopped rather than annoyed, made nonetheless clear, from the subdued and patient wife and sister moment onward, that this is a masterpiece.

"there is magic in this film", blares the front cover. whoever wrote that deserves to...well, yeah. but really. that is one of the least suitable descriptions imaginable for this documentary.

How can something as schathing and scarring on the twentieth century and the human race itself as the Holocaust be explained. How can it be understood? Lanzmann poses that it cannot be understood through recreation or archeology but through people in themselves. The excecutioners, the survivors and bystanders. All get their voice. Some will call it microphone-holding, but really this is lending a voice to something you would never have heard in itself. And it is terryfying. And it is true.

Pauline Kael infamously gave "Shoah" a bad review and I can see why, even though I vehemently disagree. It's an almost stubbornly uncinematic film, that uses it's slowness to let detail accumulate giving incredible power to the moments in builds up to. Although I would not call it a bland film, the composition of it's shots of wilderness and other historical locations in the film's present day are really beautiful, it's almost deliberately dull in long stretches as it makes it's way to the poi

Ever-haunting shortness of breath and incommensurable shame of the Christian West. "The truly horrifying thing about anti-Semitism is rather that it is a constitutive part of our normality, i.e., of a normal, 'healthy' personality, fully integrated into social life, lacking any obsessional, hysterical, perverse, etc. features...[Anti-Semitism] performs the expulsion of the antagonism that threatens to disrupt social balance into the Jewish Other." (Zizek, "Ideology Between Fiction and Fantasy")

Holohaux. Didn't watch.

The last people alive who survived the Holocaust and have a memory of it are well into their 90s. Soon, there will only be a handful left. With fascism or fascist-adjacent ideologies on the rise worldwide, this film, probably the most important film ever made, becomes even more important. It is impossible for those who didn't live it to fully comprehend the horrors of the Holocaust, but this film makes a good run at it. Every interview is indispensable. Devastating. Should be required viewing.

This movie haunts you. These images, these voices, the musicals of Lantzman. Those faces. This is the "godfather" of Holocaust films and more. This is the "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" of Holocaust films. Everything just shrinks in the face of this phenomenal work. This vision of this work is beyond anything to be expected. It has something addictive in it too, something ritualistic. Almost like seeing the kingdom of von Trier. Then again it haunts you.

# 148

Shoah, in its attempt to make the events of the Holocaust graspable, paradoxically shows just how incomprehensible they are. The power and importance of this documentary cannot be understated. Nothing is glossed over, no position is taken; this is almost as pure a document as can be made. The contents are saddening beyond words, but the fact that this movie exists is something to cherish and celebrate. Score is meaningless, as comparing this movie to others is nonsense.

Without a doubt, historically it's a very important, extensive documentary even though I felt some interviews are kind of trivial and the translated parts lay an unnecessary burden on the runtime. I particulary appreciated the way Lanzman shows the scenes of incidents took place. It's so tragic if you think about how ordinary and beautiful images can be so haunting at the same time. We see beautiful landscapes with trains, roads, forests, etc but what did they mean for those poor people?

What makes Shoah such an important historic is document is the sheer vastness of information. While the harrowing testimony from the victims is the most well-known part, it also covers the bureaucratic organisation behind the atrocities, the historical and political context surrounding it, and so many varying attitudes, from those who felt genuine sorrow to those who pretend they did for the camera to those who can barely even be bothered. As upsetting, and as essential, as you’ve heard.

152

Some very powerful moments overlapped with some boring stuff. Also, there are some factual errors in the movie.

Esse filme é IMENSO. Não falo da duração, mas da profundidade como documento histórico, levei três dias para assistí-lo, não por causa das quase dez horas e sim por sua vastidão emocional, deste que é o mais fundamental documento em película sobre o holocausto. O que mais fica entranhado na gente depois desse filme é como os judeus sabiam de seus destinos e como alemães e polacos o negavam saber. Guarde essa informação para o futuro e cuspa na cara de quem você avisou e não ouvi

159

This is really quite an achievement, and while its length makes it seem as if it is most interested in presenting the scope of the Holocaust, in reality, it seems more interested in presenting the people, rooted in their historical context by concrete details.

#166