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The Grey Zone by Tim Blake Nelson
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DVD Cover InformationActor: David Arquette, David Chandler, George Zlatarev, Michael Stuhlbarg, Velizar Binev Director: Tim Blake Nelson Brand: Lions Gate Writer: Tim Blake Nelson Producer: Avi Lerner Producer: Brad Weston Producer: Christine Vachon Producer: Danny Dimbort Producer: Danny Lerner Writer: Miklos Nyiszli DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1 Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen Picture Format: 1.85:1 Running Time: 108 minutes DVD Release Date: 2003-03-18 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Lions Gate
Movie Reviews of The Grey ZoneMovie Review: I AGREE with Michael Perry and here is some bibliography Summary: 3 StarsAs one who regularly teaches Holocaust literature and film, I was finally disturbed at the anachronisms of the language and attitudes of these men of the Sonderkommandos (who did not, by the way, as one reviewer claimed, 'elect' to join; many did not even know what they were selected for -- and those who refused were immediately killed)
but more to the point, Michael Perry is right on target with his comment:
Those who made this film seem captive their own culture and place in history, unaware that any other exists. Most of those involved in these historical events were born in Eastern Europe in the first three decades of the twentieth century. That was a culture far different from our own. In the film, they are portrayed as acting and sounding like they were born our West coast in the last decades of the twentieth century. They're vain, self-obsessed and foul-mouthed with small and petty egos. [they could be East Coast too, by the way]
I'm not talking about a lack of the slight Hungarian accents that more talented filmmakers might have added to lend a bit of realism. The problem is not that most of the characters have modern American accents. The problem is that their attitudes and the content of what they're saying is that of today's Los Angeles rather than the Budapest of long ago. Their debates about what to do have all the sallowness of those waiting in line to get tickets for a rock concert. The result rings untrue. "
This is why I would never teach this film or recommend it to my students.
more's the pity, since the film takes risks in other ways.
Finally, for those interested in personal testimony, besides Filip M?ller, who appears in Lanzmann's Shoah, author of Eyewitness Auschwitz - Three Years in the Gas Chambers, there is the most recent: nside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz by Shlomo Venezia (Wiley & Sons, 2009), The Holocaust odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando Rebecca Camhi Fromer, and the excellent work of Gideon Greif, We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, and the rare book, Scrolls of Auschwitz, containing translations of the testimony buried in bottles and other receptacles in the crematoria in Auschwitz.
Summary of The Grey ZoneBased on real life events this film chronicles a unit of auschwitzs sonderkommando a special squad of jewish prisoners who staged the only armed revolt that would ever take place at auschwitz. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 02/01/2005 Starring: Steve Buscemi Mira Sorvino Run time: 108 minutes Rating: R Director: Tim Blake Nelson The title of Tim Blake Nelson's harrowing drama of Jewish death camp prisoners who rise up against their captors to "destroy the machinery" refers as much to the compromise and cloudy morality of collaboration as to the gray world coated in the smoke and ash of the crematoriums. Inspired by real-life events at the Auschwitz death camp, The Grey Zone stars David Arquette as a soul-deadened laborer whose being fiercely jolts to life when he finds a young girl alive among the gassed corpses. He's the heart and soul of an outstanding cast that includes Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali as revolt leaders, Allan Corduner as the shunned camp doctor, and Harvey Keitel as the commandant. Nelson's rapid pacing, intimate shooting, and terse, jagged dialogue give the moral debate a discomforting immediacy as it races a deadline. When doom hangs in the air, sure death creates unique priorities. --Sean Axmaker
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