Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

simon-page-1 I have just recently watched this film in two parts, over two weeks. Yes, it is long. So what? I find it unbelievable that people can complain about the length of this film. Did you not know how long the film was before watching it? Oh dear.. did you get a 'bit bored' by the history of the mass extinction of the Jews? Did you run out of popcorn? The whole point of the film is to document the horror and also the complicity of others, not just the Nazis. The slow pace of the film gives us time to reflect on the misery and horror. The cold bleakness of the Polish landscape and the timeless quality only enhances and evokes feelings of depression and misery. The film has had a profound effect on me. It has made me angry and sad. It has made me want to tell other people. It is doing it's job, and will continue to do so as long as it exists and people watch it.

Vihren Mitev 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/

rcolgan Shoah was not just an important film to make. It was a necessary one. It was directors Claude Lanzmann's intention to document all of the survivors experiences on film. With so many horrors in history being forgotten over the years he wanted to ensure that the holocaust would never be forgotten. Therefore he chose to film these testaments to ensure that all future generations would know of the horrors that transpired during World War 2 needlessly to an entire race of people. Lanzmann made the decision not to recreate any of the horrors of the war through reenactments and not to use any existing pictures or articles relating to the holocaust. Instead he used only the testimonies of people who either lived through the holocaust, witnessed it and even some of the orchestrators. Neither was he interested in stating how or why it had begun either. There are already enough documents and documentaries about how that came about. He wanted to show how these people saw the horrors that transpired and show the many ruined lives resulting from it. Through this then in many ways he created a far more brutal picture of the holocaust. Many of their descriptions create ones of true horror, with one Polish man who visited the ghetto stating that it was "a place without humanity". His words alone create such a dreadful yet truthful image of the horrors that people had to go through under the holocaust, far worse than a recreation could have done.But even more horrifying than this are the expressions of these people as they relive the horrors in their mind. Their expressions of pure despair tell a story that could not be told in any other way. Lanzmann used many long stretching takes as people relieve their stories with no dubbing and only subtitles used so the full emotion of these survivors can be witnessed. The film ensures that we see from their perspective. It makes us consider how we would feel if we had lived through such an event.At times some of the interviewees will want to stop, due to be so horrified at reliving their terrible memories. But Lanzmann's style of questioning is very forceful, getting them to talk even if they don't want to. He sees great importance in ensuring that those who witnessed its horrors document their testimony. He gets them all to go in to every detail of what happened from the number of people there to whether they could get used to things like hearing the screams of people dying beside them. He wants us and all future generations to know the complete image of everything that happened to them.Instead of seeing pictures of the death camps or trains as they were, we instead see how these places are now. Sometimes it will be of the villages around the camps or even the camps themselves. But these camps have all been destroyed, with many of them being destroyed by Nazis before the end of the war. It's strange to see how such normal places such as a field of grass is a grave for so many innocent people. If it weren't for our knowledge of what had happened in a place like this it would have been likely that you would never even know what had happened there.And this film tries to ensure that we never forget what happened there. Shoah confronts the issue of the holocaust and make sure these testaments are documented. Because we shouldn't look away. Villages around the death camps simply turned the other cheek and allowed the horrors to go on. So the film shows their perspectives so we know the true horror caused in those events. The only way to ensure that such a terrible history shall never repeat itself again, we must understand the horror that it was torturing the lives of so many people.

bunnyhaid 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