Diagonaldi Very well executed

CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

CinemaClown A monumental 9½ hours epic that was 11 years in the making, Shoah is the definitive film about the Holocaust that presents a vital slice of human history without employing a single frame of archived footage in its imagery and paints an extraordinarily grim, utterly devastating & emotionally shattering account of the greatest evil of modern times through the collective testimonies of survivors, witnesses & even German perpetrators to cement its spot amongst the greatest & most essential documentaries to ever grace the film canvas.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Shoah" is a French documentary film from over 30 years ago that runs for over 9.5 hours. It consists of 2 parts that are both longer than 4.5 hours. The writer and director is French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, which is why a lot of the film is in French. But there are parts in English, German, Hebrew, Polish... as well, so to full understand this movie, you will 99% need subtitles. The main problem for me was the runtime. It would have been okay if this was a series maybe consisting of 10 episodes, but in terms of a film, it should be possible to watch it during one viewing and this is hardly the case here.My criticism has little to do with the contents. The reports of the witnesses from both sides are informative and intriguing, even if there is nothing really in here that I have not seen or heard in other documentaries yet. Then again, these documentaries were made considerably later for the most part, so "Shoah" is a bit of an achievement also in terms of its time. It is mostly memorable because there is no archive footage used from concentration camps etc. used. It is basically all interviews. I am not sure if I like this though. If they show trains today riding there, then why not show trains with prisoners from back then. As a whole, I personally do not have a lot of interest in watching these over 10 hours again. Way too long for its own good and the runtime definitely hurts the viewer's perception and focus. Thumbs down.

ashcrda I first watched this over a three night span on PBS; it made me grateful once again for Public Television. Every time some cretin in Congress talks about defunding PBS I want to run riot. But about the film - it takes an enormous, incomprehensible historic event and distills it down to human actions and decisions. There are two scenes I find gripping: Watching Franz Suchomel, a former administrator at Treblinka describe the operations at Treblinka and then singing the camp guards spirit song which he concludes with, "There's no Jew alive today who knows that."He made my skin crawl in the way that only video of Charles Manson can. I was also taken by the interview with the Polish farmer who worked the fields outside one of the camps, watching discretely what went on. He shows how he would make a throat slitting motion as the Jews went by in cattle cars so they would know they were going to die. If I ever doubted the presence of anti-Semitism that scene brought it back with a vengeance. The film also helped me understand how, as they say, large groups of stupid people can do some astonishing things - not good things but immensely horrific things. I recently read a more detailed account of the American South after Reconstruction and up through most of the 20th century. Nazi Germany didn't have much of a lead on us in horror; ours was just drawn out over a little more time.

Jackson Booth-Millard 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!