Shoah is Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary meditation on the Holocaust. Assembled from footage shot by the filmmaker during the 1970s and 1980s it investigates the genocide at the level of experience: the geographical layout of the camps and the ghettos; the daily routines of imprisonment; the inexorable trauma of humiliation punishment extermination; and the fascinating insights of those who experienced these events first hand. Absent from the film is any imagery shot at the time the Holocaust occurred. There is only Lanzmann and his crew filming in private... spaces and now-dormant zones of eradication to extract testimony from a series of survivors witnesses and oppressors alike. Through his relentless questioning (aided on occasion by hidden camera) Lanzmann is able to coax out material of unparalleled emotional truth that constitutes both precious oral history and withering indictment. Shoah (the title is a common designation for the Holocaust and a Hebrew word that can be translated as 'Catastrophe' or 'Annihilation') was the first of Lanzmann's films to analyse the effects of the death camps on individual lives and the world at large. It represents an aesthetic achievement in line with Alain Resnais's Night and Fog combining inquiry rage and mourning to create a monumental portrait of shame and grief. Shoah locates within the present a direct line to the horrors of the past and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful films of all time. [show more]
Pushing ten hours, and about the Holocaust, "Shoah" is no easy watch. Nor is it a perfect watch, or a flawless film. It is a sometimes horror and tear inducing, completely immersive experience. It is a documentary in which the director tracks down survivors and other eye witnesses to the Holocaust and questions them, to and beyond the point of crying, about their experiences. For example, he pressurises one man, one of only 2 survivors of the extermination camp at Chelmno, to return to the camp where he worked burying and burning his people, before the end of the war that is, when he was shot in the head. He survived this as the bullet missed the most vital parts of his brain. When he returns to the town, he is paddled down the river he used to ride with the SS and encouraged to sing the German songs he sang for them. Later he is brought to the Catholic Church the Jews were stored in before being gassed. Everyone in the village seems to recognise him, the 13 year old Jew who used to sing for the Germans in the river. This is all, as you might imagine, devastating. I did, however, manage to watch it in one sitting. During the ten hours I watched and listened to these peoples stories I felt a lot of things, and time ceased to be an issue. The images were often as beautiful as the dialogue terrible. The experience overwhelming. At times I even felt as though I could understand the Holocaust, an experience usually well beyond me. One particularly fascinating sequence maps the views of Christian Poles who witnessed the Holocaust. Although "Shoah" at times appears exploitative (despite the fact that that the interviewees believe that the film needs to be made) and has many other flaws, this film is essential viewing, even it cannot be done in one piece. The DVD presentation I am reviewing is excellent, and comes with a 180+ page book.
We will publish your review of Shoah on DVD within a few days as long as it meets our guidelines.
None of your personal details will be passed on to any other third party.
Claude Lanzmann directs this documentary about the Holocaust which builds up a horrifying picture of the Nazi extermination camps, taken almost entirely from interviews with both survivors and former guards.
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy
