The Grey Zone (2001)

Nelson achieves a harrowing sense of reality by uncompromisingly showing all phases of life and death in the camps and he does this so successfully in his choice of terse taut dialogue, quiet voices, lingering images of eyes, and a pacing that seems as formidable as the facts at hand. He keeps the lighting, the atmosphere, the scoring, and the acting level at such a suffocatingly low key that the story becomes just that much more devastating. He also has drawn superb performances from an outstanding cast: David Arquette is brilliant in his embodiment of all that is pitiful in the destiny of these events, Allan Cordunes is stunning as Dr Nyiszlis, Harvey Keitel IS the Nazi in control, and Mira Sorvino, David Benzali, and Steve Buscemi are equally superb.

The living memorial of this true story is that it tells of the only uprising of the Jews in the camps in a 1944 incident that managed to permanently destroy about half of the crematoriums in Auschwitz before that uprising ended in the mass execution of the perpetrators. A case in point of the sensitivity of this film: during the uprising the hauntingly beautiful "Alto Rhapsody" of Brahms is superimposed on the action - one of those inimitable moments of the marriage of arts as any ever captured on the screen.

This is a very fine film but it may not be one that everyone can tolerate seeing. It is extrememly vivid, it does not spare the eye, but it never stoops to sensationalism. Even in the most gruesome of scenes there is a palpable presence of the indestructable human spirit. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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Actually, there are a lot of "ifs" behind this 2001 film, directed by Tim Blake Nelson and adapted from his stage play. If you have a chance to live in a death camp, do you take advantage of that opportunity even if it means collaborating witn the Nazis who are gassing your people? In many other cinematic tales of the Holocaust there is the recurring idea that the sonder-kommando were worst that the Nazis, because they betrayed their own people, and the biggest "if" of all in this film remains what would YOU do if you were in this situation? You can say, "No, I would never do that," but then how many stories about the differences between behavioral intentions and overt behavior do you want me to tell you?

I thought that haunting question was what "The Grey Zone" was about, but then I discovered that this was actually a historical drama, in the sense that it was based on a specific historical event: the October 7, 1944 uprising when members of the 12th sonder-kommando succeeded in blowing up two of the four crematoria at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. We learn at the end of the film that the ovens were never replaced and the significance of this accomplishment can only be guessed at in terms of how many lives were saved because the largest of the Nazi death camps had its capacity cut in half. But the actual revolt ends up being a relatively small part of the film. More importantly, it sets up another moral dilemma for the men of the 12th sonder-kommando.

The leaders of the sonder-kommandos are played by David Arquette, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi and David Chandler, and they have planned the revolt, while Natasha Lyonne and Mira Sorvino lead the women who work at the munitions plant and having been stealing gunpowder to be used in the attack. I mention the names of the actors without the characters both because names had been replaced by numbers in the camps and because having people like Arquette and Buscemi unforgettably acting against type is pretty memorable. The crisis comes on the eve of the uprising when a young girl (Kamelia Grigorova) survives the gassing and an impromptu decision is made to save her. The idea of burning her alive is too much for these men, but the question is whether they can risk what they are about to do for one person (you can see why this worked as a stage play and again, why the uprising itself is not really the main point of the story). This plot twist is critical, because without it "The Grey Zone" become less about moral dilemmas and more about one of the few times concentration camp inmates fought back against the Nazis. Would the 12th Sonder-kommandos have done what they did if they did not believe the end of the war was in sight? Why did the previous 11 groups never even try to do anything similar? Questions abound in both this film and its wake.

Nelson's play is based in part on the book "Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account," by Miklos Nyiszli (Allan Corduner), who did the autopsies for Dr. Josef Mengele's infamous experiments on twins. He is a collaborator of a different type, doing his grim work because SS-Oberscharfuhrer Eric Muhsfeldt (Harvey Keitel) has promised to keep Nyiszli's wife and daughter alive. Again, the question of what you would do to stay alive or to save the lives of those you love, comes to the forefront, as does the question of what would then be considered going too far and where would you draw the line? Consequently, "The Grey Zone" is part of what I would call the second generation of Holocaust films, that go beyond providing the details on what happened in the camps and telling stories which are set in concentration camps. They are still about the Holocaust, but in a different way from what we have seen, most notably on the television mini-series "Holocaust" and "War and Remembrance."

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Now--with that kind of background, let's approach this film. For the reviewers who didn't like the "f-word"--I don't know what to say. The film makers are trying to communicate not a literal translation, but instead the emotional equivilent--expressions that communicate the same rage, hopelessness, anger. I'm sorry, but "oh dear" just won't cut it. More ridiculous are the complaints that actual inmates did not use profanity. Those men had to trick thousands into dying in the gas chambers, in exchange for a few additional months of life. A character in the movie even discovered the bodies of his own family, and put those bodies in the oven. Men willing to do that are going to draw the line at bad language? Read Filip Muller's "Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers." Did you know there was a brothel in Auschwitz?

The scenes of the sonderkommandos sitting around, drinking wine, eating rich foods--that is right out of Borowski's stories. All of that food was taken from prisoners brought to the camps, and sent directly to the gas chambers. The conning of the newly arrived prisoners into the gas chambers for a "shower"--everyone of the books I've mentioned describes those scenes in detail. The movie's portrayal of struggles between the the different cliques (the "hungarian" jews, the "polish" jews, the "greek" jews), as well as different parts of the camp competing against each other--all accurate. Harvey Keital as a fat, drunk, stupid, cynical, slob--very typical. Mia Sorvino's character could be any number of women described in Nomberg-Przuytyk's book. The hopeless anger, the grittiness, the arbitrary senseless cruelty--the whole feel of this movie is right.

This is almost a perfect movie, if your favorite author on the Holocaust is Primo Levi.

That said, I do have two criticisms of the movie. The film begins with the doctor main character having a conference with an older, bald guy, with a small amount of gray hair. I'm not sure, but apparently that was supposed to be Mengle. God I hope not--because part of the horror of Mengle was his boyish good looks. He had very black, very full dark hair. He had a pleasant smile, and looked much younger than his actual age. I must be mistaken, because there's no reason to cast an old bald guy as Mengle.

A second criticism is more difficult. I love this movie, because of its feel, its accuracy, its subtlety. However, if you don't know much about the death camps, this movie may be hard to follow. But it's not as hard as some of these reviewers would have you believe. For example, at one point some SS soldiers are walking on a roof with gas masks on, shaking what looks like colored rock salt crystals out of a can down some open pipes. I can see that some people may not recognize that was how the zyclon-b gas was dropped in the death chambers.

If you have any interest at all in Auschwitz, and want to see a movie that will give you a far truer picture of camp life--then see this movie. But if what you're interested in is believing that everyone in the camps were all one big happy family--well, there's lots of choices out there for you.

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