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.

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.

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.

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.