Shoah
An eye opening documentary about a terrible time in history. We all know how atrocious the Holocaust was, and there have been countless documentaries and specials depicting in great detail the misery that occurred. In 'Shoah', Lanzmann is determined to get an accurate history from eyewitnesses. He doesn't use a single shot archival shot, only the accounts of the survivors and of the ones that helped carryout these atrocities or stood by and watched. He does offer shots of the sites of the death camps as they were at the time of the shooting, which only underscores how unfathomable these exterminations were when the sites today seem so innocuous, even serene, after have been dismantled.
The stories coming from the people who lived through the events are far more powerful than any reenactment or historical pictures could be. The emotion that comes over them as they talk about the nightmare they lived through is enough to overwhelm you and personalizes the stories. It connects the horror that seems so unbelievable to actual humans who lived through it, and reminds you that this happened in a time not so far gone.
My gripes with the movie are not with the content or the interviews that Lanzmann gets. They are phenomenal and riveting. My issues lie in the structure of the film. There is little in the way of a narrative structure. One segment could easily be interchanged with another and little would change. There could have been a more digestible viewing experience had there been a loose structure and perhaps some context. Over the course of the film you do gain context just through the interviews, but it was harder to ascertain than I would have liked and I'm still not sure if I got the full picture.
My other issue is the length. There is a lot of stories worth listening to, and all of it valuable. However it definitely felt like homework, and a lot of that was down to how it was shot. Lanzmann is in no hurry with his camera. Even when there is no narration there are a lot of slow, methodical shots. Compounding that there was no short-handing of the interviews. Lanzmann has no trouble inserting himself into the film, which I think is also a bit of a problem, and he doesn't speak all the languages of the subjects. So you have a situation where Lanzmann asks a question, it gets translated, then you listen to unsubtitled response from the subject, and then listen to it being translated back. This bloats the runtime for no reason.
Despite its length, and bloated structure, the content is invaluable. It gives great insight into the human nature that leads to the type of thinking where genocide is acceptable, and how we as human beings can stand by while something so awful is occurring. It's undoubtedly required viewing.
8/10
Nanook of the North
There is a lot made of the authenticity by Flaherty in creating this documentary. People seem to take issue with the liberties taken in portraying Nanook in reality, changing events, names and staging scenarios. Personally, I'm fine with this. I thought it was somewhat obvious that this is more on the spectrum of 'based on reality' than here is footage taken as they were. It was 1922, cameras were quite big and it was a remote location in freezing temperatures. Exaggerating the truth isn't exactly novel in documentaries. Flaherty may have done some hand-waving to make things possible capture and more appealing to a mass audience, but from what I understand he had the support of the people he was documenting. It was fascinating to watch this footage from a historical perspective. The narrative structure of the film was lacking, but I appreciate the look at the culture.
6.5/10
Sans soleil
This is more a poem than anything else. It's a series of mostly random shots, mostly from Japan but also other various countries. The images themselves are beautiful, but that alone would not be enough to hold my attention. There is a narrative that overlays most of the movie in the form a traveler righting a letter. The female voice over reading it back is hypnotizing, and it adds an additional layer to the video collage and adds philosophical weight to the otherwise random images. Even still the film does drag and get repetitive in places, particularly where there is a lull in the narration. It's still a movie where I could see myself picking it up at any spot and watching it for a bit and getting transfixed by the lyricism of the film.
7.5/10
Triumph of the Will
When I first started watching this I was impressed. Not by the craftsmanship of the film, although it is well made, but by the historic portal it provides. It's a look into a time in history that is so rooted in my mind as being of the past. Seeing these masses heil their leader provides an opportunity to study the faces of the people caught up in a terrible movement when the hysteria was just building. Could they ever know how history would come to view them and their ideals?
This historic fascination soon faded however. The ideology conveyed is none to subtle. It is, after all, a propaganda film. Even viewed through the lens of a filmmaker trying to excite and draw in people to their movement the film seems harsh. Hitler ruled by fear, and it is underscored in here. Always filmed from below looking up, he looms over, leering and shouting, never making overly human movements, like a smile or even facial ticks. It's unnerving.
While this comes across as a documentary, you can feel the artifice on the screen. Yes, its capturing an actual rally, but the settings feel overly ornate, like a movie set, and indeed they were carefully setup with the film in mind. The wide shots, and intricate lighting are all precisely planned and polished. I can't fault any film making here, but its not overly inventive either. It's a bunch of Nazis doing Nazi things, which gets a bit old after awhile.
5/10