The Grey Zone
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.33 You Save: $7.65 (51%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.46 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Grey Zone
Movie Review: Devastating
Summary: 5 Stars
I have seen many movies based around the Holocaust mostly through a number of university courses I have done over the years (both as an under and post-graduate). Of all the movies I ever have seen, none have affected me as much as The Grey Zone. This movie is a "must see" for anyone interested in the period of history - actually on second thoughts, it should be required viewing for anyone mature enough to deal with the subject matter - but be warned that it may haunt you for days afterwards. I would also advise that you do not allow any children to view it or have access to it.I rank this film well above such films as Schindler's List and The Pianist - not that they are bad films, they're not - they are great works of art. But these films (and others) still insist on following the Hollywood formula of requiring survival stories, victories, and heroes. The Grey Zone is brave enough to attempt to show that for millions of people, such things were absent.
The sets, landscape, and the scale of the operation depicted are all very accurate to the historic record. If you have ever seen the famous 1950's French documentary "Night and Fog", you recognise how accurately the camps and buildings have been recreated in The Grey Zone. The sparing use of music (in part due to economic constraints) is also extremely effective. Its place is taken by the constant throb of machinery and industrial noises.
I would take issue with those reviewers who criticise the film for the heavy use of swear words. The Sonderkomando depicted were Hungarian Jews. The Hungarian Jewish community were highly integrated into normal Hungarian society and spoke the vernacular language, not Yiddish. As a Hungarian speaker myself, I can assure you that even at the best of times, Hungarians can swear like troopers and I have no doubt that under the circumstances, the language would probably have been even more "colourful" that that used in the film.
The term "Enter the Zone" has been used for years to market everything from fad diets to video games. For once, had it been applied to this film, it would have been appropriate - for if you watch The Grey Zone, it is likely to change you.
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: The movie I have been waiting to see.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best movie I have seen this last year. Being interested in the genre of Holocaust films I found this to be the most realistic yet. It does not flinch in showing the horror that existed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and particularly in the crematoria and gas chambers. This is the movie to show to those who claim "the Holocaust never happened." It may be horrifying in its portrayal of history. Let us hope by watching this movie that more Holocausts and genocides don't occur again.I have been interested in the Sonderkommando and read all the same source materials that Tim Blake Nelson consulted for this film. Miklos Nyiszli's "Auschwitz" and "Amidst the Nightmare of a Crime" compiled by members of the Sonderkommando (and buried near the crematoria in Birkenau) were the main sources Nelson used. His film kept true to events in both books. Some may say this film is a horror fest. Let us not forget that the Holocaust and the Nazis were a horror fest.
David Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Mia Sorvino all deliver Oscar worthy performances. They make the characters believable. Nelson did an exceptional job directing this. Keitel had an instrumental part in seeing that this picture was made. The whole cast worked for less to be sure this important picture was made. I commend the whole cast, crew and producers for making this film. I feel it will be a contendor for many Oscars. This film is based upon the play of the same name Tim Blake Nelson wrote. When it played in New York it won numerous awards and received rave reviews.
I hail this as the best most realistic Holocaust film ever made. Go see it if you desire to know the truth.
Movie Review: Outstanding, reservations aside...
Summary: 5 Stars
Other reviewers on this site who have criticized various aspects of this film are certainly not without reason. The acting IS quite poor, the script overly verbose and even wooden at times, and of course the characters all speak in English even though they are supposed to be Germans/Hungarians/Poles. Also the entire film is based primarily on the memoirs of Dr. Miklos Nyszili, parts of which are now are disputed.
However, this film is nonetheless an absolutely chilling portrayal of what went on inside the camps, and in particular the grisly nature of the activities that occurred within the gas chambers/crematoria. To that end the film goes way beyond any other holocaust film, even Schindlers List, in showing what occurred there. For those reasons this film is an absolute must-see, and I am sure the viewer will find it to be an utterly moving if not horrifying experience.
And of course the film also does justice to what was a heroic act of resistance at Auschwitz that has been largely overlooked by history. Unlike many films in the POW/Uprising genre, the characters in The Gray Zone knew that they had no chance of survival or even prolonging their lives by rebelling against the SS. But they did so anyway, if for no other reason so that they did not go down without a fight. Anyone who attempts to understand one of the major paradoxes of the Holocaust, which is the passivity with which so many of its victims accepted their fate, would certainly do well to see this historical episode as it is portrayed in The Gray Zone.
Movie Review: Grim and unrelenting realism
Summary: 5 Stars
Prior to watching this dvd, I had read accounts of the true events it depicts, namely the heroic but futile uprising of the crematoria sondercommando at Auschwitz in 1944, during the Germans' frenetic gassing of the half million Jews of Hungary. These men, whom Auschwitz survivor and acclaimed author, Primo Levi, called "the ravens of the crematoria" were all Jews and were kept alive for the grisly work of herding their fellow-Jews into the gas chambers and then burning the bodies in the crematoria ovens. They received privileges denied other Jewish prisoners for carrying out this hellish work but were themselves murdered and replaced after about 3 months because the Nazis considered they knew too much about their heinous crimes. With Dantesque and nightmarish realism the movie depicts the horror of the men's existence, their brutalisation and their simultaneous efforts to cling to a shred of humanity, for example saving the girl who survives the gas,and to make a stand against the monsters who have forced their moral corruption. Also noteworthy is the courage of the Jewish women who smuggled explosives to the men of the sondercommando and who were themselves subjected to hideous torture and subsequent execution.
This is not an easy film to watch, but it helps to lay to rest the oft parroted claim that the Jews of the Holocaust did not fight back at the same time as it reminds us of the barbarism and appalling inhumanity of Nazified Germans in WW2.
Movie Review: One of the most powerful movies on the Holocaust
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very hard movie to watch. It depicts the horrors of the Holocaust in general, and specifically of the death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. The story is based on true events, and shows, in chilling detail, the systematic destruction of the innocent in the gas chambers & crematoriums. The main characters are the members of the Sonderkommando, a group of Jewish deportees who are assigned the cruel, dehumanising task of not only organising the condemned, but also in cleaning up after the gassings, and disposing the corpses in the crematoriums. It is about the rebellion organised by the twelfth Sonderkommando, who decide to blow up one of the crematoriums before they themselves are liquidated, and it is also about the attempts of a small group of men to keep alive the one girl they find still alive after a gassing.
This movie is not for the faint-hearted. It is gut-wrenching and heartbreaking, such a tragic tale that nevertheless needs to be told, again and again, so that the rest of humanity will never forget. Especially in today's world, where genocide is still going on in parts of the world, where the systematic destruction of the innocent is still being continued, and where there are still ignorant groups of people who dare to deny such things have taken place.
Watch it, and learn.