Austerlitz

Five-minute shot of people milling about, doing nothing in particular except walking and looking around. Cut to another 5-minute shot of people milling about, doing nothing interesting in particular. A teenager is wearing a T-shirt with an irreverent expression on it, but not that irreverent. The host waxed philosophical about that T-shirt at the cinema before the movie began, unintentionally setting the stage for artistic pretension. Cut to another 5-minute shot of the entrance to the concentration camp memorial site. Some are taking photos of the Arbeit macht frei sign, but so what. Cut to another 5-minute shot...get the idea yet? I got up and left. Walking out set me free.

Sharing the name of a novel where a character (Austerlitz) sees his mother in a Nazi propaganda film about the Theresienstadt camp where this documentary is set, the film painfully and disturbingly observes tourists walk around the camp for 90 minutes like the character Austerlitz did. When the camera is fixed for at least 5 minutes at a time in different spots around the camp, you notice how the tourists behave as they look around, chat, and take selfies. They don't act disrespectfully, just normally like they were at a theme park or whatever, making you question how they should behave in a Nazi prison camp. Indeed, interesting thoughts arose as I watched this film. Though, the film is precisely that, 90 minutes of fixed shots around a Nazi camp with no additional dialogue. It was (apart from its praises) painful to sit through at times. I don't expect anyone to walk out and think it was a great cinematic achievement or entertaining but perhaps they acknowledge its message that could be read in many ways.

I liked the film. I did not agree with the previous reviewer about the filmmaker "using" the visitors in any way. He is just documenting, cinema verité style, and the shots of visitor after visitor taking selfies in Aushwitz speak for themselves. This is clearly cinematic work, for a big screen, but I watched it on a small screen, and it was fine, too. I occasionally think what would have happened if the filmmaker took an outside view and showed us how it "should be," what the site should be for these tourists, explained for the viewer - American style, like everything is explained in American documentaries - but this is not the director's style, not his form, so I was okay with it. This film could have been a short, probably better as a short... But then again, it was director's choice, all to be respected.

"Austerlitz" blames tourists in concentration camps for being part of a mindless event industry that has developed around the camps. The truth is: Despite the artsy approach, switching camera positions only every 5 minutes or so, the film itself is part of this industry. you will never find this movie in a cinema near you, you will never find it on a TV channel, it was only meant to fish for awards on festivals and even there the audience mostly cant take it because of boredom. the movie not only blames every person in the frame without their consent, it also leaves the audience with the strong feeling, that the director shamelessly uses the victims of the holocaust to boost his stalling career and get more tax money for the next boring project. to be fair, the approach is as old as movie awards, but it shouldn't be rewarded.