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the audience applauded

Fresh and Exciting

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

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.http://vihrenmitevmovies.blogspot.com/

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.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is a very reliable reference book featuring some good choices, and I saw this film both for that reason, and because of the length. This documentary from director Claude Lanzmann focuses on the horrific events during the Holocaust, where over six million Jewish people were exterminated. He interviews all the people that are still alive during this time in the Second World War who witnessed parts of if not all of it, including traumatised survivors, people living near the death camps, and very controversially, ex-Nazis who only agreed to be heard but are secretly filmed. We see these people speaking the director's language of French, but there is also some German and Polish language amongst, and some translated on the spot by the director's translator, but don't worry, there is some English too. We see all the locations of death camps and train lines leading to them, e.g. Auschwitz, Chelmno, as they look in the present (sometimes covered in snow, but no matter). What makes this documentary really interesting besides the stories of the people interviewed, is the fact that not one single frame of archive footage (if any exists) is used to portray the horror of these times. At about nine and a half hours long, you may struggle to keep our eyes open throughout the entire thing, but at the same time, you want to hear about these unimaginably horrific incidents. If if it wasn't so long I may give it a slightly higher rating, but don't worry, I don't deny the critics are right to give it five stars, the director did take a decade to complete his film, so it is a must see documentary. It won the BAFTAs for the Flaherty Documentary Award and the Flaherty Documentary Award (TV). Very good!

i have only watched the first disc and i wanted to cry and pull my hair and tear my clothing and wail out loud. i am not Jewish nor am i related to any survivors or victims. i have known many people with the tattoos, as i am the same age as most of them. they are all dead now. i am not, esp. in my heart.first, i thought that it was visually beautiful. i had a visceral reaction when the director was insistent even to the point of bullying the cast. i worried that if they began to relive it all they would come undone and cry and wail for the rest of their lives, not be able to stop. on disc 1, though, the emotion ran high but no one lost control. perhaps something inside them is flat, just to survive.i thought this was an excellent portion of a film. i think the idea of getting all the survivors on tape before it is too late was a great one. i think the topic should not be avoided since there is genocide going on periodically all over the world. are the people who know the history of the holocaust then to intervene so that history will not be repeated or will we stand by? one thing i sensed strongly from the little bit i saw was the position that the townspeople or people in general who were not targets were in. i always thought they should have 'done something' but now i see 'what could they have done? they would have been murdered. along with their families, with total impunity. it would seem that the Nazis controlled everything and everyone at that time and place. even those who were not direct targets were victims in a way and have had to live with what they saw and their own helpless guilt. Carole/wannadance