User Reviews

I've been learning about the Holocaust for at least twenty years now. I've attended at least two talks that were given by survivors. I've read memoirs and short stories and graphic novels and history books, seen fictionalized films and documentaries, and been to at least two Holocaust museums, including the one in DC.

Yet it wasn't until watching this film that it truly dawned on me: the Holocaust took place in this exact world that we're living in now. It took place in a world where people wear Hawaiian shirts, where children walk alongside their bicycles, where people pay to get haircuts. It took place in a world with railroads and travel agencies and moving vans and typewriters. It took place in a world with farmers and bureaucrats and engineers and babies. A world where people complain about their jobs, where people are too tired or selfish or stupid or scared to care about anything other than themselves. The trees looked like trees then, the rivers flowed like rivers, and the grass was green in the summertime. All of this happened, not in some otherworldly, black-and-white, unfathomable realm, but in a world where children under four can ride a train for free, where not having a flush toilet in your house could be considered appallingly primitive, and where a living person exposed to exhaust fumes will suffocate and a body exposed to flame will turn to ash.

Lanzmann's interviews are intense. His personality, albeit quite calm and always polite, is stirringly insistent--he never hesitates to call a lie a lie, even as he encounters every possible variety of mistruth. There are those who try to rewrite the past--to claim ignorance, poor memory, a lack of any actionable authority, a rosier and more melodramatic view of a tragic fate that was simply unavoidable. What could we have done, they say. We didn't know, they say. We did everything we could, they say. Even if we had risked our necks, it was fated from up above. He never lets that pass. "No. I don't think that's true," he says, and their faces falter, all shrugs and awkward smiles and apologetic platitudes, because of course it's not true.

The Holocaust unfolded because everybody kept doing what they were supposed to be doing, too overwhelmed or uncaring to choose resistance. It was an unprecedented and horrifying event, yet it unfolded in the temperament, landscape, and conditions of this very normal world. Hopefully, Lanzmann's courage will encourage viewers to speak up whenever they have an opportunity to challenge wrongness.

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."

Claude Lanzmann's nine-hour Holocaust documentary is difficult, painful, and, above all else, exhausting – both emotionally and physically. I watched this goliath over four nights, and I pretty much had to force myself into every viewing, knowingly condemning myself to two hours of misery. But I wouldn't trade the experience. There are movies, and then there are... well, there are no words for what this is.

Lanzmann spent six years tracking down and interviewing Jewish survivors, German commanders, and Polish eye-witnesses, reconstructing through oral testimonies – without even a second of archival footage – the horror of the Nazi death camps. The dialogue, often interminably filtered through an interpreter and then translated from French via subtitles, is overlaid on footage of the death camps as they stand now (that is, in the 1970s/80s), as innocuous ruins or grassy fields. Thus, Lanzmann juxtaposes the atrocities described in his interviews with the quietude of the modern-day locations, acknowledging from the outset the impossibility of ever fully recreating or appreciating the horrors that took place.

Throughout the film, we mostly perceive Lanzmann as an off-camera interviewer, but he nevertheless takes a very active role in the film's presentation. We note his determination to assemble a historical record at all costs: he includes footage of himself assuring Franz Suchomel, a former SS officer, that the interview is not being filmed. (Many alleged perpetrators are seen only through a grainy black-and-white hidden camera, a device that keeps them emotionally distant from the viewer, as in a 1940s newsreel). Lanzmann rather sardonically asks his interpreter to complement a German couple on their beautiful home, knowing full well that it once belonged to a Jewish family.

The interviews with Jewish survivors are most haunting of all. Lanzmann doesn't ask them to communicate their emotions, but instead needles them for details, seemingly inconsequential observations that nevertheless improve our understanding of how the Final Solution operated. But he also knows when to keep quiet. The silent anguish evident on the survivors' old, scarred faces is often more powerful than words could ever be. One survivor of the Warsaw Uprising remarks to Lanzmann, "if you could lick my heart, it would poison you." We can see this even in his face.

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.

With commenting this film we are going out of the movie industry to get into history and the world that it shaped. This rating concerns the importance of the theme of the movie and the effort and the enormous importance of the established work.

The film draws us into the deepest, dark and dirty human intentions that led to and are even devoid of any humane sense. It is shown the downfall of modern humanity, which mimics the barbaric world of the past. The long centuries of experience appear to be insufficient to call for peace and universal existence. On the contrary, it seems that the negative trends will not disappear very soon.

Although it is not shown any atrocity, the stories of witnesses of the war are enough to push our imagination to unthinkable mental pictures. It remains impossible to think and honestly to sympathize to storytellers due to lack of language in which we could understand what they experienced. We can only be able to pity them when they do not find the strength to continue their stories and to bow to their power to tell everyone about the downfall of much part of mankind.

Extremely long and difficult story that requires serious approach and interest in the topic. Valuable result.

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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 did not love every second of Shoah. I didn't even love every hour. But, I think this was intentional. While yes, I didn't quite give this a perfect score, I can completely understand why people have. It hasn't left my mind in the days since I watched it, and there is nothing else out there like it. I think the reason why we don't see many big documentaries on The Holocaust anymore is because Shoah covered so much, and is such a difficult movie to follow up. Between it and Schindler's List (which is obviously not a documentary, but deals with similar subject matter in a lengthy, gruelling, but admittedly more accessible manner), films about The Holocaust have likely peaked. Then again, I guess Son Of Saul provided a fresh and uniquely haunting depiction of The Holocaust, so maybe my point doesn't entirely stand.

WELL: when it comes to documentaries, it's difficult to imagine another one on The Holocaust being as comprehensive, gut-wrenching, and ambitious as Shoah. Plus the fact that in 1985, there were still more survivors and eyewitness accounts to draw from helped. Despite the lack of archival footage and images, this film is incredibly gruesome and horrific, as many of the stories alone provide an intense and overwhelming amount of detail. Lanzmann was a real tough interviewer throughout, and was completely unafraid to ask difficult question to all his interviewees, whether they were victims, perpetrators, or bystanders. It's uncomfortable, perhaps, but the interrogating style of interviews does get more detail, emotion, and brutal honesty than you would get from more formal interviews. Also perhaps controversial was the filming of ex-Nazis, who agreed to have their voices recorded but not their faces. Lanzmann used hidden cameras for these interviews, and usually that kind of deception would turn me off a documentary, but the argument here that they got off too easily for their crimes and therefore deserve to be exposed is a compelling and rather agreeable one.

It's hard to cover too much about this movie. The experience of watching it is really necessary, because putting something this huge into words is futile, unless you want to go on for pages and pages. But I would like to address two prominent criticisms of this film, and explain why they didn't bother me too much, while briefly going over what I didn't expect to get out of the film but did.

The first criticism is regarding how some interviews aren't translated efficiently, with Lanzmann asking a question (which is subtitled), his translator repeating the question in the interviewee's language, the interviewee answering, and then the translator putting their answer back into French (I think? The language that Lanzmann was speaking), which is then subtitled. The way some viewers complained about this, I was worried every interview was going to be translated this way, but in the end, it was maybe about a quarter? Maybe even less. And even then, it wasn't that bothersome. Tightening up the editing might take half an hour to an hour off the runtime, but the way these interviews are filmed, there would be so many jump cuts, and I think it would just feel weird.

The other criticism is the length in general. That almost nine and a half hours is too long. This is one that I understand, and yes, the length was challenging. The last two to three hours, I'll admit, I found it harder to concentrate. But, I think this was intentional, and even though it leads to a less "entertaining" film, I think it elicits a powerful and unique emotional response. By making the film so long (and occasionally repetitive), Lanzmann is effectively making us used to the horrors he covers in such explicit detail. Many of the interviewees talk about how they were nauseated and disgusted by what was happening in the concentration camps, but after a while, became desensitised and numb to it all. The man who had to remove the bodies from the gas chambers threw up the first time he had to do it, but after some time, he became used to it. The townspeople who lived near concentration camps were horrified at first- by the smells, the sights, and the knowledge of what was happening so close by- but also, eventually, got numb to it. Unless you were there, it's hard to imagine how something so horrifying could become so "normal." But watching a documentary as horrific and detailed and long as Shoah replicates that feeling. Once I realised I was no longer as horrified or saddened by the stories in the final hours as I had been in the first few hours, I finally had some semblance of an understanding why those who lived during that time became apathetic. It's a haunting and sobering thought, realising that in all likelihood, I, my friends, my family- had all of us been in the same situation, it may have been similarly easy to accept such horrors.

Therefore, Shoah, above all else, reads to me as a warning to not become desensitised. To not stop caring when terrible things happen, because not doing anything can let the genuinely evil people get away with so much more. Of course, Shoah achieves far more than just this in its gargantuan runtime, but this was my main take away. I'd highly recommend Shoah, despite its challenging nature and overall length, because if you give it time, it can likely change your outlook on life, and better you as a human being.

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.

This viewing experience should be basic education for every human being. To be taken onto this journey and listen to the brave survivors recanting their horrific experience and seeing with your own eyes what the human species is capable of, is simply earth shattering and edged into one's memory for a life time.

What else can I say but , experience this film , it's existential , brutal, deeply emotional, and one of the most important film archive I have ever experienced.

Be prepared to carry a burden after seeing this for quit a time. It's not an easy thing to watch and hear but it might be one of the most important ones in your life.

Incredible documentary with first-person testimonies, slowly and calmly, to listen, meditate and observe the worst of human nature, the wolf that justifies itself, the guilt that evades, the hidden, justified hatred and resentment, the evasion in the looks, the slow and stammering responses, the laughter of certain witnesses, the human being can really be a demon, and then continue living as if nothing had happened. Education in hatred of the neighbor, of the brother, we see where it can go, and here, unfortunately, history repeats itself, we continue to incite hatred for mere economic interests, disguised as culture, nationalities, races and religions...

I sat through the nine and a half hours of this shattering documentary of the depths to which humanity can plunge when exposed to constant hatred promoted by the state. How did these savage monsters put aside all remnants of their humanity and do these attrocities? To kill without mercy and remorse, hundreds of thousands, millions, of human beings of various ages. Old people, people in their prime, small innocent children and babies. Words fail me. I sat through the hours of this great and immensely important documentary of evil, as a duty to know, to spread the knowledge, so such can NEVER happen again. Yet it HAS recurred: in the Balkan civil wars. Human beings are capable of such depravity. Russia's Invasion and genocide in the Ukraine. Evil people, leaders of countries, just seem to be constantly popping up. Maybe that's what humanity IS? All that needs happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

I haven't much to say that hasn't already been said about Shoah. It is certainly a powerful film, and as far as I'm concerned, its experiment succeeds. Its very ontology begs the question of the power of the "kino-eye." If we are to compare it to, say, Schindler's List or, better, since it is non-fiction, Resnais' Nuit et Brouillard, we ask, can the film be as powerful when none of the "real" footage is used? Shoah might succeed merely because of its length, but one could perfectly well argue that it fails. There is nothing wrong with finding this film excruciatingly boring, particularly if one does not consider the experiment a success. For this reason, I disagree with the review of the film that says people should not post if they didn't like the film. One does not, for one thing, "know what they are getting into" necessarily, because the film is experimental in nature. Also, the claim that the film is too long is partly justified by the fact that it is a commercial film, i.e., distributed for viewing. If one does not like it, this is no doubt partially the fault of Lanzmann and the way the Holocaust is presented as something "you must feel bad about." Any sense of dislike or distaste does not make a viewer insensitive or cruelly apathetic in any way.

It is also possible to be turned off by Lanzmann himself. I've always found that an "objective" documentary is nearly an oxymoron, but Lanzmann, if this is what he is trying, fails miserably at objectivity. When he interviews the guards of the camps, he is aggressive and often interrupts what they are saying. There are two (or three, I can't remember) who ask that their names and faces do not be revealed. Lanzmann does both, the latter by sneaking in a secret camera. The guilt of these guards speaks for itself, but Lanzmann seems to be more interested in telling them what to feel, and recounting to them their own stories rather than merely letting them speak. And the hidden camera thing seems to me little more than an immature fetish.

More generally, I feel somewhat uneasy about the fact that Lanzmann has made his entire career by marketing the Holocaust. Each of his films recounts it in some way or another, and treating the tragedy as a commodity has some consequences which do not put the director in a positive light. Also, he seems to ignore the fact that less than half of those killed in the Holocaust were Jews. The film's title, Hebrew for "annihilation" or "holocaust," obviously implies that it is the story of the Jewish plight. Still, if it is an attempt at absolute realism on Lanzmann's part, it is, in a sense, somewhat reductive to refer to it this way. This, naturally, is a more general criticism about teaching the Holocaust, but I think it an apt criticism of Lanzmann, who I suppose we could call the "part owner" of the Holocaust market.

It's nine and a half hours of travelogue footage and interviews with terribly ordinary middle-aged and senior citizens about events that happened a half-century ago.

Except that the sites visited are the scenes of the systematic mass murder of roughly 11 million men, women and children, including some 6 million Jews, and the ordinary grandparents are the survivors and perpetrators of some of the most horrendous atrocities that mankind has committed upon each other.

It is a terribly draining movie, hypnotic and disorienting, both in it's length and in the blandness, the matter-of-fact descriptions of things that would make a normal person scream in horror. And that is what is so amazingly important and meaningful about this film; that these were ordinary, average people. These were, and are, normal folks like you and me, and anybody, regardless of background, moral upbringing, and standards of decency can be caught up in circumstances beyond their power or experience, and can do the most depraved or heroic things imaginable. It is shocking, insightful, and a very,very important film that forces us to confront our own humanity and decide what that, in fact means.

But it's nine and a half hours long. Be prepared to be drained and leave with your head buzzing.

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.

I don't understand all of the "1 point voters". This was not made to entertain people. Iy you don't like it, don't vote please. It's a shame that Shoah has an average of not even "7"! There's no reason to vote on Shoah, if you don't like the format. Any other criticism on Shoah is totally ridiculous. Shoah is the, like some users mentioned, the ultimate documentary on the Holocaust. Take your time and watch Shoah. I've watched it in four parts on TV in two weeks. Ther's nothing comparable to Shoah. Lanzeman did a job for the whole world. Just have a deeper look at the interviewed people, the streets, the landscapes, the churches, the villages... It's so much more effective than any over motion picture.

Shoah was not just an important film to make. It was a necessary one. It was directors Claude Lanzmann's intention to document all of the survivors experiences on film. With so many horrors in history being forgotten over the years he wanted to ensure that the holocaust would never be forgotten. Therefore he chose to film these testaments to ensure that all future generations would know of the horrors that transpired during World War 2 needlessly to an entire race of people.

Lanzmann made the decision not to recreate any of the horrors of the war through reenactments and not to use any existing pictures or articles relating to the holocaust. Instead he used only the testimonies of people who either lived through the holocaust, witnessed it and even some of the orchestrators. Neither was he interested in stating how or why it had begun either. There are already enough documents and documentaries about how that came about. He wanted to show how these people saw the horrors that transpired and show the many ruined lives resulting from it.

Through this then in many ways he created a far more brutal picture of the holocaust. Many of their descriptions create ones of true horror, with one Polish man who visited the ghetto stating that it was "a place without humanity". His words alone create such a dreadful yet truthful image of the horrors that people had to go through under the holocaust, far worse than a recreation could have done.

But even more horrifying than this are the expressions of these people as they relive the horrors in their mind. Their expressions of pure despair tell a story that could not be told in any other way. Lanzmann used many long stretching takes as people relieve their stories with no dubbing and only subtitles used so the full emotion of these survivors can be witnessed. The film ensures that we see from their perspective. It makes us consider how we would feel if we had lived through such an event.

At times some of the interviewees will want to stop, due to be so horrified at reliving their terrible memories. But Lanzmann's style of questioning is very forceful, getting them to talk even if they don't want to. He sees great importance in ensuring that those who witnessed its horrors document their testimony. He gets them all to go in to every detail of what happened from the number of people there to whether they could get used to things like hearing the screams of people dying beside them. He wants us and all future generations to know the complete image of everything that happened to them.

Instead of seeing pictures of the death camps or trains as they were, we instead see how these places are now. Sometimes it will be of the villages around the camps or even the camps themselves. But these camps have all been destroyed, with many of them being destroyed by Nazis before the end of the war. It's strange to see how such normal places such as a field of grass is a grave for so many innocent people. If it weren't for our knowledge of what had happened in a place like this it would have been likely that you would never even know what had happened there.

And this film tries to ensure that we never forget what happened there. Shoah confronts the issue of the holocaust and make sure these testaments are documented. Because we shouldn't look away. Villages around the death camps simply turned the other cheek and allowed the horrors to go on. So the film shows their perspectives so we know the true horror caused in those events. The only way to ensure that such a terrible history shall never repeat itself again, we must understand the horror that it was torturing the lives of so many people.

This is ground-breaking film explores really the most evil moment in human history in a way that's never quite been done before or since. There's a real sense of powerlessness and hopelessness to this, there's nothing you can do but sit and watch in horror. I bought this on Blu Ray and it has a 4:3 aspect ratio and it's been nicely restored with good quality colour and sound. It came out in the 1980s but the director spent a lot of time interviewing and filming for this film. The film is made up almost entirely of eye witness accounts of what people saw and experienced. It uses only footage shot for the series, visiting all the key locations, there's a haunting quality to these beautiful polish forests where these truly evil events occurred. Now nature has taken it over again and there's little evidence left of what happened. All the more reason to capture these interviews on film before the personal and individual stories become lost. Survivors are spread out across the world, none apparently ever wanted to live in Germany or Poland afterwards. The film uses these old folksongs to chilling and sometimes beautiful effect but that's about it in terms of the music for the film. At over 9 hours long this is a huge film that you probably want to split over two days. The language is split between polish, French, English and many others to a lesser degree. You learn so much in this film about the details of what happened, things I never knew before. The lack of music doesn't matter as the power of the words are all you need. If this was made today it would be much shorter and slicker and faster edited but I think that misses the point, this shouldn't be rushed or be wining awards for it's editing or music. The film uses a train at times to sort of recreate the journey to the concentration camps. Many of the details are terrible and the survivors are reluctant to talk about it. The director asks good detailed questions without ever being asked the number question, why did this happen? He's also very good at getting people talking and many of the people featured are not really that old, only in their 50s for instance when interviewed. We are also reminded too this was a continental murder system with victims transported from France, Holland, Greece, all across Europe. It asks the terrible question about did the allies know what was happening? Did the local people? Did the bureaucrats sat in their offices? The film doesn't go into the 1930s and the rise of the Nazis, it focuses really just on 1940-45.

Really every person should see this film. It should be shown in every school in the UK.

I understand the criticism of SHOAH. It fails in a number of things one would normally expect a documentary to deliver. It spends little or no time establishing the causes of the holocaust, nor does it even make a pretence of being an impartial document of what happened. This is an opportunity for the victims to describe what happened to them in order to ensure the world never forgets. The decision to secretly film some of the Nazi guards and camp officials grates as it deviates from this agenda and throws the partisan stance of the filmmaker into the spotlight. He justifies this on the basis of who they are and what they did - but that is a cop-out. He betrayed the integrity of the film by lying to them and proves little by it. That they have spent the years since the war ended rationalising their behaviour to themselves is hardly a surprise - if they hadn't been able to do that they would not have survived anyway. Having said all that SHOAH remains a remarkable testament from those who were there and saw and felt such things as none of us could begin to imagine. As such it is an important work that should be on every school syllabus. The people of the world who do not know, or choose not to believe, about the holocaust (and there appear to be lots of them) need to see this.

Over the past several weeks I had the opportunity to see all of Claude Lanzmann's 9 1/2-hour documentary about the Holocaust. It left me cognizant of a greater tragedy in much the same way that PIXOTE opened my eyes to the humanity on the streets of South America. Like many people who have seen SHOAH I was interested in it primarily because of the degree of praise that this film has received; some critics have called it one of the most important films ever made. Well, now that I have had time to reflect on this film for the past month can I honestly say that SHOAH is one of the greatest films ever made? To answer my own question, it depends on how you look at it.

SHOAH in now way covers the entire scope of the holocaust. Instead it focuses on the people who were sent to three specific concentration camps during WWII. The film also concentrates on the people who were involved in the deportation and execution of those who arrived to the camps. Its last hour is devoted to events that occurred around the Warsaw Ghetto. The fact that this film limits its scope made me aware that this was an account that's too big to be perfectly analyzed and deciphered. It's too complex for a standard 2 hour, 4 four or even the film's 9 1/2 hour length. It's testament to the number of documentaries about the Holocaust which have come out fairly recently. But unlike those documentaries, SHOAH seems less about the Holocaust than it is about people, whether they were the commanders who intimidated the Jews, individuals who had small farms or houses near the concentration camps or even the victims themselves. These are all people who have a story to tell. SHOAH made me think out of the context of the film a lot. The fact that it told me so much about people made me wonder about the loss of the life that occurred during the 80's when the Contras fought the Sandinistas, or when Pol Pot executed his own people, or when Stalin starved his own soldiers during the War. All of these people had a story to tell but you hear very little about these tragedies that fell on their own lives. In a way, that's so unfair. Nevertheless, SHOAH comes closer than any other documentary I have seen when it comes to showing us what makes life so sacred and special.

To be fair, there are long stretches in SHOAH that are less than riveting, and moments when you question the ethics and purposes of the filmmaker. As one commenter candidly pointed out, there are times when SHOAH is more like a chore than an experience but as Claude Lanzmann orders one interviewee during the film, "We have to do it, you know it." And that's why SHOAH has to be seen: It's a real film about a real tragedy, real events, and real people.

It goes without saying that a mammoth film like Shoah can't be summed up in a simple review. It shouldn't really be reviewed as a film, it's more of an educational piece. At 9 and a half hours straight, it's a documentary that can't be consumed in one day. It would weigh too heavily on your shoulders. I scattered my viewing over the course of a few weeks which is the ideal way to take it, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten the first half. However, in saying that, its most powerful moments come in its last two hours as it features contributors breaking down and explores familiar places, such as the White House, in the style we've seen Treblinka. By virtue of its content, it's captivating. There are only so many tragic stories of Jewish victims you can take in a certain amount of time but Shoah treats them all with the respect and attention they deserve. It's flawed filmmaking however. The problem is that it lacks structure. It wouldn't feel as laborious if each hour was broken by topic, but instead it flows from topic to topic without much reason, sometimes coming back, sometimes telling something slightly related.

It is indeed in Lanzmann's passionate thoroughness that bites back at him. It doesn't hold the film back necessarily, but it could've felt like a more complete piece. It's length largely comes down to its slow pacing due to the fact that Lanzmann does not speak many of the languages the interviewers speak, particularly in the first half. As a result, everything has to be filtered twice through an interpreter, who's really telling us the story for the most part. Any slight misinterpretation or change of emphasis is down to her so she deserved quite a bit of credit. The most polarising interview is certainly the one with a Nazi who proudly gives details of concentration camp conditions. An unmistakably vile human being you can't take your eyes off. But it's a film that makes you angry and makes you sad, as the camera catches some very emotional interviewees at their most vulnerable moments. Its editing method may make the film unnecessarily scattered, but it paints a rich picture of a terrible period in human history. Admirable and essential viewing.

8/10

This documentary made me squirm in my seat and shiver more that any fictional horror movie ever has. There were no graphic images to shock the viewer, only people. People with tales of survival and death that I wish I could push to the back of my mind saying "It's only a movie". It's not. It is an oral history of a terrifying time. I will never forget the emotions I felt watching Shoah. I hope more people take the time to see this long, but very worthwhile documentary.

despite my deep interest in the Shoah, I could watch only part of the movie. I was too disgusted by the morbidity by which the interviewer (the director himself) ask the most minute, excruciating, terrible details to the survivors, like "which members of your family died? how did you recognize their corpse when you dug out their bodies from the common graves?". And the interviewee eyes are filled with tears, and the camera steady on close up to show well his expression of pain. I found all this too filthy, this is voyeurism, it inflicts too much pain in those poor people, without bringing any benefit from an historical perspective. I bet that most interviewees had nightmares for weeks after these kind of interviews. And the movie is boring and technically very elementary.

This eight-hour documentary is NOT what you might think. It contains not one frame of archival footage of Nazi atrocities. Instead, it is dozens of modern (early '80s) interviews with surviving death camp inmates, guards, a commandant and people living near the camps. In several cases, Lanzman takes surviving inmates back to the razed sites of the camps, where they recount the horrific indignities visited upon them. The most hair-raising interview is about six hours in, with a Jewish barber who, in the space of 5 minutes, shaved the heads of his wife, his best friend and his best friend's wife just prior to their being gassed. With tears welling up, he describes shaving their heads in silence and without acknowledgement, so he might continue living and offer testimony to their hellish demise.