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Released by: Olive Films
Released on: May 26th, 2105.
Director: Uwe Boll
Cast: Steffen Mennekes, Arved Birnbaum
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
It's a serious Boll movie. Deal with it.
Holocaust cinema is filled with stories of triumph over tragedy. Whether it's the inspirational message of Polanski's THE PIANIST or Spielberg's story of the "good German" SCHINDLER'S LIST, these films have a morally comfortable narrative. And while these types of films are valuable and often deeply compelling they also only represent part of the picture of one of the greatest human catastrophes of the 20th century.
In 1955 French director Alan Resnais made the first widely seen holocaust documentary - NIGHT AND FOG. While newsreel footage of Nazi concentration camp atrocities had circulated before the release of the film, it was the first record of these horrors to be widely scene. Resnais narrated the film himself, and his factual but sarcastic tone was deeply unsettling. As excruciating footage of mass graves, emaciated bodies and corpses piled like firewood rolled across the screen, the French director made note of the images and passed damning judgement on the men and women that allowed this to happen. This was a remorseless warning from history. The viewer was granted no mercy. Because at its base THIS is the essential truth of the Holocaust. The horror.
Uwe Boll is famous for a lot of sketchy reasons. He's made some remarkably terrible films - often based on idiotic video games. He's a cantankerous and rambunctious character. A man who's been in an actual boxing ring with some of his fiercest critics. Initially his movies were simply silly. Either his schlock amused you or annoyed you. At some point though he turned to genuinely dark fare and discovered a strange populist streak mixed with an attraction to outrageously politically incorrect overtones. Films like RAMPAGE (about a dissatisfied antisocial young male serial killer) and ASSAULT ON WALL STREET strive to score social commentary points amongst the shootings and gore. Which leads us to AUSCHWITZ.
Bookended by seemingly impromptu man on the street interviews with German teens where the director quizzes the youths on the facts and history of the holocaust, the film has some serious flaws. In his introductory comments to the movie, Boll addresses the camera directly and states that he made this film as his duty as a German to document the horrors of the concentration camps. He says that today's young people often display appalling historical ignorance and need to see the truth. The flaws in the film however are mostly due to the lack of focus in the interviews. Some of the kids say very stupid things but some of them are articulate and informed. Boll has a very clumsy interview technique in these segments and they seem scattershot and manipulative. Frankly, he should have ditched this entire aspect. The archival footage that pops up should have remained though.
The make or break part of the film resides in its middle section. This is Boll's NIGHT AND FOG moment. He attempts to recreate a day in the life of the Auschwitz concentration camp. We see Jews on a train heading to the camp and watch them as they are physically stripped naked and processed through "the system". This is done documentary style. We don't get to know the guards and nazi personnel. We just watch them do their job. Make no mistake however. This is brutally awful material. It appears that Boll was interested in creating historical authenticity. That means we see babies being shot in the head because they were of no use as workers and a couple of gas chamber sequences that are almost impossible to watch. It's a fine line between exploitation and dispassionate reporting and it's hard to tell exactly what side Boll (especially when he appears in the film as a camp guard) is on but I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Hearing guards discuss family business and mundane personal chitchat while people are dying in excruciating agony behind steel doors just a few feet away is deeply disturbing yet somehow realistic. At its height the holocaust was all about the machinery of death as practiced by worker bees. The banality of evil. The cogs in the machine. Boll is utterly unflinching in what he shows and that is what the viewer has to pass moral judgement on. We may be more comfortable dealing with these mass murders in the abstract than seeing EXACTLY how the Nazis went about there grim business. And this is not a story that has ended either. Darfur and many many other genocides have occurred since.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Olive/Martini present AUSCHWITZ in 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen. It was shot on HD video and looks it. There is a some intentional desaturation on display but image quality is perfectly acceptable. This is a gritty presentation as befits the material. The audio is handled by a German Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track with English subtitles. It gets the job done and everything is clear and balanced. There are no extras - just a basic menu.
The Final Word:
Make deserved fun of Boll all you want for the various terrible films he's been involved with but this one took real guts for the German director to tackle. If you can come into this with an open mind and are willing to give Boll the benefit of the doubt I believe this film is a worthwhile endeavor. It certainly is shocking and seems to be a fairly realistic depiction of the horrors of the Auschwitz camp. Recommended - with reservations.
