Shoah

One reason why I'm drawn into cinema is that at its best it brings together all of art, transcends the boundaries, and without which I would be somehow clueless, somewhat not completely myself. Almost always I describe these films as important, subjectively speaking, and most of the time the mark they imprint upon me is a thirst for more, all this in the most positive sense one may imagine.

And then there's "Shoah" (1985). It's unbearably long, gruesomely shocking and depressing, and with certainty a film I don't wish to see again and see as a kind of anti-film. Yet that's precisely why it's remarkable, and why it is important. It's transcendental in a way that I've rarely witnessed: it disregards time and its own format, and simply exists. It doesn't care that it stops and meditates. To "linger" is a wrong choice of words, since it means staying in one place "longer than necessary, typically because of a reluctance to leave". The point is not to linger, but to endure. The point of the film is to exist as it is, as a witness. Thus one of its weaknesses, if one uses such comparative and charged term, becomes its essential characteristic: the film is all about not being a film, it's not about finding a quick way around a point to another. It's a record of pain, and it's not meant to be an easy-going experience.

"Shoah", then, is like a film that refuses to be a film. It was Ebert who called it "an act of witness". I agree. It is a witness to people reminiscing about something so horrible of which it's quite impossible to reminisce at all. But they do it, and their pain has been transferred to Lanzmann's poem. This poem doesn't try to make the incomprehensible comprehensible, but rather make that, which is incomprehensible to them, the survivors, equally incomprehensible to us. As such, "Shoah" is a monument, a collection of recollections that wrenches at the heart.

I suppose my reaction was the most natural there is after being exposed to what the Holocaust was: emptiness that is like a fleeing dream trying to catch its tail, unsuccessfully groping at the ever-distant memory. The feeling is that there was no way out, and there still isn't. That we can learn from the horrors of the past, but really don't. And at what cost? The survivors' testimonies, of their own survival and of the lives of those who didn't, is, in the end, the story that deserves to be told, again and again.

I saw "For All Mankind" (1989) shortly after this. I'd say these two films form a very perceptive cross-section of what we humans are like. The awe I felt during "Mankind" only intensified the opposite kind of awe, of dread, I felt during "Shoah": can this be the same humankind that is capable of both kinds of deeds, and almost contemporarily? No matter how far into space we launch ourselves, we carry within us both the darkness and the light, the hopelessness and hope. In the words of W. B. Yeats, "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."

This documentary tells the story of the Holocaust from a particularly human and "everyman" viewpoint. Claude Lanzmann realized that the victims of this horror were gradually dying off and took the initiative to search out the innocents who had these hidious tattoos on their arms and just talk to them. Not all wanted to be a part of the picture, but Lanzmann had a very unique ability to coax and sometimes browbeat the experiences out of these ordinary people who were subjected to unspeakable horrors. This is a long and extremely painful film to watch. Make no mistake. At the end is a better understanding of man's capacity for cruelty to his fellow man. I believe that is what Lanzmann wanted to pass down to the coming generations.

To me "Shoah" represents an inversion of the other canonically revered Holocaust documentary, Resnais's ''Night and Fog". Resnais's short film has always made me a tad uncomfortable. Of course watching it, with its excerpts from films made by the Nazis documenting their own murders, is a powerful, even unforgettable experience. Yet, I always thought that Resnais was in a way blackmailing his audience into being "moved" by his film.  In showing images of the murders, he is not only displaying the victims in ways the victims cannot give their consent towards, he is also trying to make the audience say they have "seen" and understood the horror. This, it seems to me, is Resnais attempting to put his audience (and himself) in a position of "safe understanding" of the holocaust, like "been there, seen that".  The very sense of horror provoked by the film nonetheless protects the viewer from any sense of incomprehension. It provides an easily defined experience of revulsion.

Shoah, shot entirely in the "present" of people who lived through the Holocaust as prisoners, Nazis, or witnesses, operates on a more poetic level.  In a way it is not even a documentary on the Holocaust itself but a documentary about coping with the memory of disaster in the present.  The disaster cannot be shown, and it cannot really be described.  The stories one hears in the film are very moving, but part of what is so powerful about them is the way the speakers struggle to articulate their experience or convey their emotions.  At times, Lanzmann's interviews even seem a bit sadistic, like he is forcing the speakers to reveal their pain, but I think part of what is great about Shoah is that it has no pretension to being a "healing'' work.  Rather, in pointing to how any attempt to understand history, and particularly its disasters, can only be partially successful, partially remembered, Lanzmann does not shield himself, or the viewers of the film from the sense that the helplessness of the Other always strips the self of its own sense of empowerment, its ability to speak to or help or understand the Other.

On a historical level, the most interesting point for me was how much time and effort the Nazis devoted to the cover up of their crimes. I always had an image in my mind of the Nazi elite, and indeed many of the true-believing populace, being so ideologically fanatical that they didn't care who found out about the death camps because they truly believed they were doing good by "purifying" humanity. But everything here indicates that the regime's greatest fear was that anyone would find concrete evidence of the genocide. What at times almost operates as a kind of sick black comedy, however, is how much effort went into concealing the mass murders, and yet how utterly blatant it is that everyone knew what was happening to those herded to the camps.

I'm a bit amused by critics who lavish praise on the film by saying that, despite its subject matter, it is ultimately "life affirming" and "humane."  It seems to me that they have to say this if they are to laud the film, or they themselves will not seem "humane". I, for one, do not see it as, in any way whatsoever, a "warm" work. The Nazis interviewed in the film all seem like what they were- bureaucrats or yes-men who did their jobs to make their living. In Nazi Germany, mass-murder was an industry where many people made livelihoods. The most terrifying presences in the whole film are resistance fighters whose greatest joy in life was killing Nazis. One still feels an insatiable hatred towards humanity coming from them. One of the men's statement, "Lick my heart, you'd die of poison," is, for me, one of the greatest lines in all cinema, and the words I would use to summarize the experience of watching "Shoah." I must express my one and only displeasure with the film. No where in its nine and a half hours does Lanzmann interview or even mention any of the non-Jewish categories of people targeted for extermination by the Nazis. Watching this, you wouldn't even know that Roma, homosexual, and physically and mentally handicapped people were also slaughtered in the camps. These omissions fit nicely with Lanzmann's Zionist ideology, but that only underscores, I think, that this is a great work, but not a humanitarian one.

I finally saw Shoah yesterday at the Ontario Cinematheque. I sat through the entire 9 and a half hours in one sitting.

Shoah surprised me in several ways. The first was how the interviews were conducted. Lanzmann is a very direct and aggressive interviewer and initially, I was very put off by how he delved into his subjects. He seemed almost wreckless and completely devoid of empathy as he continued to ask the most personal and private questions, never hesitating to force his subjects to think back to what was not only the darkest moment of their lives, but the darkest moments of modern Western history.

Eventually, what happens however, is astonishing. Most interviewees eventually give up their resistance, and very carefully relate their stories. Lanzmann forces them to consider details. How many bodies per furnace? How wide was the ditch? How far was the train ramp from the camp's bunkers? These details facilitate memory and soon, the subjects open up in the most remarkable way.

No matter how you feel, or what you think you know about the Holocaust, this film puts faces to the tragedy in a way few conventional documentaries could. The emphasis here is on memory and oral history.

As one Holocaust victim says early in the film, "It might be good for you to talk about these things. But for me, no." Eventually however, he realizes he must bear witness.

There's one remarkable scene where Lanzmann confronts German settlers in Poland about the previous owner of their home, who were Jewish and sent to Auschwitz after their properties were confiscated.

People who don't find this film 'entertaining' or perhaps 'boring' probably feel that way because, outside of the immediate experiences of the subjects being interviewed, there is no wider context to present the events. A worthwhile companion to this film would be the BBC's Auschwitz: Inside The Nazi State which runs 4 and a half hours, but will help you understand Shoah better.

The other thing I found fascinating about this film was how the translations actually helped you absorb what is being said in a way direct subtitling wouldn't. For instance, most of the subjects speak German or Polish. Lanzmann speaks French mainly and some German. His translator translates what's being said into French and then the subtitles translate the French into English. By being able to look into the eyes of the people speaking, in their own native language, and then read the subtitles, was a very subtle, but very effective tool that deadens the 'shock value' of what is being spoken and gives the viewer more time to absorb the content.

Some people have complained also that the film also has many long takes, which are seemingly of nothing. For instance, Lanzmann lets his camera linger on the remnants of Chelmno, which was razed after the war. Although it just looks like a five minute shot of a field, what struck me was how different this bucolic field must have been in 1942. Making this connection justifies every frame shot. Lanzmann, however, will not force this down your throat. You must be patient.

This is an astonishing film that must be seen by everyone, at least once. Please review the general historical context of the Holocaust before you see it, to get the most out of it, but otherwise, this is living testament of the most vital kind.

Brilliant, essential film-making.

In discussing this film, the late great Roger Ebert wrote "It is not a documentary, not journalism, not propaganda, not political. It is an act of witness." This may truly be the best description of a project so enormous in scope, and so direly important as a testament to our world's history, especially because upon watching it's so very hard to form words of one's own. One learns about the Holocaust as part of our education in youth; here we hear the words of people who lived it, from one angle or another. And still it's so incredibly difficult, both emotionally and on a basic visual level, to imagine the absolute monstrosity of these terribly real events. The testimony is stark and heavily detailed, whether from victims and survivors, perpetrators, or those who saw from any distance what was happening, and from these many interviews emerges a portrait of unremitting, unparalleled evil. Yet the brutal truth is that all this horribleness is not, strictly speaking, "inhuman"; rather, it's part and parcel of the human experience, what we as people are capable of at our very worst. And between the monumental endeavor of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, and the supreme intelligence of editor Ziva Postec, it becomes clear that inasmuch as there was any intent behind 'Shoah' beyond bearing witness, it was to shed light on this facet of ourselves that is so disturbing to face up to. And that only makes the project resonate even more deeply than it already would.

Exemplified in the words of SS war criminal Franz Suchomel, among others, the picture illuminates the cold calculation, and the bent toward utmost efficiency, of the industrialized mass murder that the Holocaust represented - both in the deadly methods employed, and the deceptions woven to manipulate victims into a state of relative cooperation. In this regard, the scenes that Suchomel recalls right as the second half of the picture begins are particularly grotesque, but one way or another it's evident that the same mind for innovation that has driven human civilization for millennia was actively engaged in the horrors of Nazi Germany. Then there are the beliefs, attitudes, superstitions, biases, and otherwise cruelties that are endemic to human psychology and sociology, nastiness that every person is susceptible to whether we recognize it or not and which we all must strive against. We see this to some extent in the testimony of some bystanders, whose words might reflect a casual, condescending, or maybe unwitting or misdirected tinge of prejudice, and more so in the thoroughly researched representations of historian Raul Hilberg. Hilberg especially draws connections between the tribalism that hearkens back even to the texts of Bronze Age religions, and further, approving of or inciting violence against entire groups of people - tribalism that was refined, twisted, and disguised over centuries to limit, oppress, exclude, and expel select demographics as those in power decreed, and which Nazi Germany simply took to its logical conclusion. Indeed, the exact same language and tactics are still used, today, by the wealthy, powerful, and ignorant against communities whose only offense is being different; anyone who fails to see the comparison is either lying or complicit.

And through the remarks of victims and survivors - not least those like Abraham Bomba, Richard Glazar, and Filip Müller, who were forced to play their own part in the operation of the camps while awaiting death themselves - we are exposed to the pure beating heart of humanity, the instinctual drive to survive, understand, and overcome. At no point is watching 'Shoah' "easy" but the survivors' recollections arguably reverberate most tremendously of all, for their acts of remembering are closest to our experience as viewers: how does one even begin to truly absorb the impossible gravity, the sheer immensity, of everything that is being related? One can plainly see the pain on the subjects' faces as they try to grapple with their memories, revisiting events that were themselves staggering beyond what words can readily portend; so far removed from World War II one struggles to envision the abject reality of which the interviewees speak, which leads to a continuous cycle of sympathizing with the speakers and then struggling even more. This vortex of emotions, too, is just as much a part of the human condition as the repugnant acts of which we are capable, and the beliefs and attitudes we all must actively fight against in society and in ourselves. And the fact that Lanzmann's magnum opus brings all this to the surface of its own accord, without the smallest measure of dramatization or embellishment? Well, suffice to say that even only a short period into these nine and one-half hours the opinion is firmly cemented that this is without question one of the best films ever made, and one of the most significant.

Why, setting all this aside, the fundamental construction of 'Shoah' is so impressive that a lengthy book or "making-of" documentary would also be interesting as a dissection of everything that Lanzmann and his collaborators were doing here. The production history is well established: many countries, hundreds of hours interview footage, many years of capturing footage and even more of editing. Once more, Lanzmann deserves utmost commendations for the boundless effort - his vision, the time and resources spent, what had to be exhausting both physically and emotionally in traveling to all these locations and hearing so much gut-wrenching testimony. But it bears repeating that editor Postec quite earned her own star with her contributions here, for the scope and breadth of the picture is hard to even comprehend for the layman, yet she shaped the whole into something that strikes hard, covers a dazzling amount of proverbial territory, and looms large in cinema and in global culture generally as a peerless achievement and a landmark historical record. Moreover, Lanzmann very smartly arranged for contemporary footage of the roads, railways, and sites where the awful events of the Holocaust transpired, frankly a stroke of brilliance. In so doing he at once gives us sights that in and of themselves are hauntingly beautiful from an aesthetic standpoint, while also accentuating the extreme magnitude of the Nazis' activities in terms both geographical and structural; of the stunning depravity of the Nazis' crimes; of the complicity of companies, organizations, and governments in enabling these crimes, or at least in failing to oppose them; and more. Just as much to the point, the cinematographers who served on 'Shoah' - Dominique Chapuis, Jimmy Glasberg, Phil Gries, and William Lubtchansky - are to be congratulated for the keen eyes that have so shrewdly delivered such visions to us, be they sweeping landscapes or thoughtful close-ups, for at every turn their work only ever heightens the impact that the movie has.

Taken together with the mindfulness and discretion Lanzmann demonstrates as an interviewer - listening carefully, gently nudging as necessary, letting gaps of silence resound with the distraught emotions they carry with them - the end result is profound, and exceptional. It's worth revisiting Roger Ebert's assessment: that 'Shoah' "is not a documentary, not journalism, not propaganda, not political. It is an act of witness." That's all it should have been, and that's all it needs to be to be hugely affecting, and to be the marvelous feature that it is. That 'Shoah' does, in its own time and in its own way, speak to issues of conscience, intervention, complicity, survival, justice, geopolitics, industry, humanity, culture, history, religion, psychology, sociology, and more - past, present, and future - only affirms the unequivocal, far-reaching substance, consequence, relevance, and otherwise materiality that the movie represents. That one can draw a line between notions brought up here, precipitating the Holocaust, to subsequent events in recent history, and indeed in 2023, only emphasizes with sad urgency the dangerous position our world is in. It's not enough to say that Lanzmann's film is valuable, or educational. It's a must-see, for every single person. It's vital; a priority. It's altogether quintessential, for every reason. Yes, its runtime is prohibitive; no, it's not easy to watch. That doesn't change the fact that everyone needs to see it, both for its excellence purely from a standpoint of film-making, and far more so for the critical concerns it addresses, and the weight it bears. Seek it out, and make the time for it; 'Shoah' demands the viewership of one and all.